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.
I suppose I should clarify. The whole “queen of heaven” thing was adapted from the pagans at Ephesus in 431 or thereabouts.
What came before Jesus was imperfect and in Jesus we have the perfection of our relationship with Jesus.
Again, praise God whose ways and minds we do not know and who works in mysterious ways, that He would show us the true Queen of Heaven in the person of Jesus’ mother, Mary, so that we may know that we worship the true God, creator of all.
All things are His and are filled with His glory. May we never cease in praising and thanking Him for all that He has done for our ancestors and us.
Yep, that’s what Jesus told us to do. “Go into all the world and keep it secret. Don’t tell anyone for fear we will damage the faith.” Wait,,,,, I couldn’t find the scripture for that. Is it in one of those books the CC keeps for itself for fear others may find out about how Christ saves unless they pay into the CC?
What came before Jesus was imperfect and in Jesus we have the perfection of our relationship with Jesus.
“our relationship with God”
You seem to be under the mistaken impression that the religion forum is actually a venue for a healthy discussion of theological issues. Nothing could be further from the truth. You can tell the legitimacy of intent by whether a participant he here in support of something or primarily against something. Where you won't find many Catholics here to primarily attack Protestantism the same cannot be said of the anti-Catholics who salaciously flock to any thread with a thread title linking anything Catholic to scandal. (You and I know exactly who these miscreants are, a collection of self described former Catholics who know nothing about Catholicism, and chronic Church shoppers not content with any theology that doesn't place them above Mary.)
The result is a food fight fought with fully digested food waste. The anti-Catholics come here to participate in their favorite pastime; Catholic baiting in which they will say anything they can think of to injure or or slander Catholics, the Catholic Church, Catholic Clergy or the religious figures we hold most dear. They then declare themselves victors, as though this was a contest, whenever a Catholic is too offended or disgusted to continue, responds in kind, or hits the abuse button. The closest thing I can compare it to is bear-baiting.
Bear-baiting was popular in England until well into the nineteenth century. Bear-gardens which consisted of a circular high fenced area, the "pit" much like a sunken boxing ring surrounded by raised seating for spectators. A post would be set in the ground towards the edge of the pit and the bear chained to it. A number dogs would then be set on it, being replaced as they got tired or were wounded or killed. In some cases the bear was let loose, allowing it to chase after the dogs and frighten the spectators.
After you have seen the same lies told by the same posters and the same content from forbidden sites cleverly laundered for the 7th or 8th time it becomes pretty obvious.
As is clearly seen in this thread and others like it, is that the protestants move from one subject to the next or take a single word or phrase out of our apologetics to avoid answering or responding to what is actually said in those posts.
It is called “moving the goalposts” and it is difficult to engage them without offering up a new target for their feeding frenzies.
It is what it is and as I said before, I usually gain from the debate because I find myself more fully understanding Jesus and the faith through my own prayerful study of Scripture.
Take the good that God gives you out of if and be thankful for it and leave the rest to the Holy Spirit.
Though it would help if you didn’t assume you were posting to a scriptural illiterate, you are still wasting your time in proselytizing to me. And I’m way too old for to confuse someone’s fervor and self–conviction with the truth.
You may have better luck with the nonCatholics, probably evangelicals, nonDenom, Pentecostals more so. If you stick to the same sola scriptura, meat and milk, rightly divided, what’s scripture for, etc., parts of Romans, most of the boilerplate of your post, I think you’ll be fine, since you’re already in agreement with nonCatholics on all that anyway. But if you’re more forthcoming on the full Dispensationalist teaching, well, most Protestants still have a problem not following the teachings of Christ.
All heresies have a bit of truth that, usually, is their foundation for a whole bunch of false teaching. Calvinism comes to mind. And they also are completely convinced they have rightly divided the scripture. If others would just study the word like they have, they’d agree, they think. You all think you have rightly divided it, yet you end up differently.
The easiest way to identify heresy is usually where it ends up, not where it begins. In Calvinism it is salvation by election. In Dispensationalism it is dividing out Jesus ministry, the Kingdom of God, from the Church and replacing it with Paul; in the separating and differentiating Christ’s teaching to his disciples, to His other Apostles versus that to Paul.
Once he or she realizes this about your teachers’ invention, you will lose the follower of Christ.
I would wish you good luck in this endeavor, but I have to be honest: I wish you bad luck in it as it a false gospel and, at the least, wastes folks time in their walk with Christ.
We must recognize that we are not dealing with Protestants in general or even Protestantism. We are dealing with the fringe and the kooks who are so wrapped up in themselves that no actual Church will have them or keep them. Theologically, we are confronted with what amounts to the Bar Scene in the first Star Wars movie. The whole tag team "Whack-A-Mole" methodology is incredibly predictable to those of us who have been on these threads for a number of years. When the limits of their faith, understanding and education is reached they change the subject.
If this were a contest, as they seem to think, it is those occasions when they change the subject and cede the argument where we could declare victory. But this isn't a contest as much as it is a test in which we demonstrate that we accept all of the Revealed Word and hold true to it "in our thoughts and our words in what we have done and what we fail to do". They will not prevail against God, so this is about us.
Whack-A-Mole, hahahahahahahahahaha! Love it.
As for the rest, I know you are right that is how I am able to keep from losing my temper for the most part.
It is learning experience for me and I use much of it in my teaching of the faith to our young people at Church.
In fact, I am heading off to there now.
Teenagers for Confirmation.....Talk about a test!
It’s not unexpected.....
It’s absolutely in line with Catholic thinking.
That’s what you get when you put your confidence in something besides Christ alone.
The topic wasn't about Moses being in heaven. It was about Moses being *assumed*.
Moses was buried, not assumed.
Hebrews 10:16 This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them; 17 And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. 18 Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin. 19 Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, 20 By a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh; 21 And having an high priest over the house of God; 22 Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.
Very good. And we have Revelation 21: 22* n I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God almighty and the Lamb. 23* The city had no need of sun or moon to shine on it,o for the glory of God gave it light, and its lamp was the Lamb. 24The nations will walk by its light,* and to it the kings of the earth will bring their treasure.p 25During the day its gates will never be shut, and there will be no night there. 26The treasure and wealth of the nations will be brought there, 27but nothing unclean will enter it, nor any[one] who does abominable things or tells lies. Only those will enter whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.q
We have assurance of faith, not salvation. We have the hope of salvation of St. Paul, not the assurance of salvation of Calvin. But there is a process of being made perfect; that process is begun with the acceptance of Christ. But it is a journey and not finished unless and until the Judge of All bestows His mercy upon us at our Judgement.
In Sola Interpretata-World, history begins anew each morning.
The term ‘Protestant’ signifies the amorphous mass of non-Roman Catholic heresies formed since the 16th century in the West in contradiction or retaliation to the Roman Catholic Church.
OOPS. They count YOU In that group, too, ya know. The Eastern Orthodox do not call themselves Roman Catholic, do they?
Whereas the one dogma that binds all Roman Catholics past and present together is submission to the Pope as sole authority (thereby abolishing every other authority), the one dogma that all Protestants have in common is the rejection of the need for submission to any rule for salvation, other than one’s own private opinion (about everything).
Wow, second paragraph condemns your group again, not just us. How's that make you feel? I would hope you at least agree that ANYONE who calls themselves a Christian should be in submission to the Holy Spirit and the same doctrines revealed to all mankind through the Bible. Unlike the assumed definition this prejudiced writer uses, just because someone rejects the Pope as their leader, doesn't mean they aren't still submitted to Christ as their head and chief shepherd.
Undoubtably, within Protestantism there are many opinions and contrary beliefs, but they all base their religion ultimately in a rejection of external authority as needed for salvation. What Rome began with rejection of all authority save that of the Pope, Protestantism finished by rejecting the authority of the Pope as well. This results in an indifference to and a severance from the Body of Christ, the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, the sole Church founded by Him and His Apostles.
I don't know about you, but I can't bring myself to read anymore of this obviously BIASED and UNSCRIPTURAL hogwash. It sounds like this writer dumps ALL Christians into the same bucket and it doesn't matter if they hold to EVERY single belief expressed in the Nicene Creed. If you don't accept the Pope as your head, they refuse to accept you as belonging to the universal body of Christ. As for me, I will trust in what Holy Scripture says over what fallible men - power-hungry men - declare. Scripture, instead states:
I Corinthians 6:17 "But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit.
I Corinthians 12:12-13 "For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ. For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit."
Ephesians 2:18 "For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father."
Ephesians 4:4-6 "There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; One Lord, one faith, one baptism, One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all."
Philippians 1:27 "Only let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ: that whether I come and see you, or else be absent, I may hear of your affairs, that ye stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel"
Did you read that? With one mind STRIVING together for the faith of what? - the Roman Catholic Pope? - or the faith of the GOSPEL. THAT is what counts with God.
No doubt.
Hebrew was the language spoken by the ancient Israelites, and in which were composed nearly all of the books of the Old Testament. The name Hebrew as applied to the language is quite recent in Biblical usage, occurring for the first time in the Greek prologue of Ecclesiasticus, about 130 B.C.In New-Testament usage the current Aramaic of the time is frequently called Hebrew (hebrais dialektos, Acts 21:40; 22:2; 26:14), not in the strict sense of the word, but because it was the dialect in use among the Jews of Palestine. [http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07176a.htm]
Well, why would the Romans use Aramaic? They dealt with the Jewish upper class and priesthood who knew Aramaic. The lower classes would know Aramaic, but also be at least conversant in Greek, the lingua franca of the time and place.
Bottom line is that there were three different languages used on the plague above Jesus. There is no disagreement between the Matthew, Luke, and John. It was that each was giving what was written in three different languages.
It doesn't say that anywhere, and your identification of who used what language only applies to Luke, because he wrote all of his Gospel in Greek.
Every time I am asked that question it arises from a faulty perception that the three disagree in what was written. The do not. You can try to obfuscate any which way you want but the fact remains that I know what the reason for asking the question was.
You give me unsubstiated claims; I give you reasons why they would not be true and you claim that I obfuscate? Show me where I am wrong from Scripture.
You may wish to check a bunch of your dates, but the Roman Catholic Church never claimed Biblical authorship to itself.
Look; half of them think that Jesus taught in English from the KJV 1611.
You actually didn’t understand the term “entering the holiest”? That is not a literal building here on earth. It’s the right to come before the throne of God through the blood of Christ. All who rely solely on the blood of Christ for salvation can go before the throne of God whereas prior to Christ’s death only the High Priest could and then only once a year and after ceremonial cleansing.
That's just it, if Christ is in you, then he will never leave you or forsake you. He will not cast you out OR lose you.
Never said He would.
You are his when you receive him as Lord and Savior and the Holy Spirit indwells you as the "earnest of your inheritance". If that doesn't "ensure" your salvation, what else could?
An inheritance is a gift. One may refuse a gift, or else spurn it at a later date.
Yeah, we’ve noticed. Not only not condoned by scripture but is condemned.
You may wish to check John 1, the various Passion accounts and Acts 2.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.