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 would rather believe as Christ wills.
Do you believe each of those writers was inspired by the Holy Spirit what to write or not? Was Jesus correct when He told them that the Holy Spirit would “bring to their remembrance” or not?
Neither Scripture nor Tradition identify it.
Or, if you can’t, why don’t you just admit that you got caught trying to make a point that was ridiculous hoping you could somehow show inconsistencies in scripture. Just like you tried to pass off a verse trying to get people to think that Jesus told everyone to listen to Mary when it was the other way around?
I told the poster, as well as you that I had inadvertently reverse the order of the pronouns. I am not the one posting ridiculous personal extra Scriptural posts and surprised when caught.
Each of the writers was inspired by the Holy Spirit. How about you produce the originals and we can see what was originally written?
There are three Scriptural accounts of the inscription. Only one, Luke, mentions using three different languages. John says that Pilate wrote it and says nothing of different languages.
However, not all Bible translations contain the mention of the three languages in Luke and many of the early Greek manuscripts do not contain it. Some believe that this was included by later translators and transcribers to resolve this difficulty. In any event it forces us to look to the ENTIRE Revealed Word as a whole to determine the Message of Jesus and to not try to base or twist Christianity on a single verse.
LOL Common, they haven’t run out of arrows. Their busy making some more out of “new revelation” as we speak.
I’m sure you would but you would have to stop listening to that guy in the pointy hat in Rome and stick with just scripture along with the guidence of the Holy Spirit.
John, Matthew and Luke told us. Duh!
Surprised? John tells us that there were three different inscriptions in three different languages and John tells us what one was, Matthew tells us what another was and Luke tells us what the third one was and I’m surprised? You were caught not even knowing there were three different languages on that there.
Coredemptrix is not equal?
Wrong. It's not denominations which make up the body of Christ and it's not through succession from whoever or whatever.
Any individual who is in Christ is part of the body of Christ according to God. Any church's or denomination's opinion or definition about it is meaningless.
quote the passage. it doesnt say that
Of all the areas that we disagree, I think this is THE greatest. To deny the Lord that bought us not only means they may teach false doctrine about Jesus and who he is, but, even worse, deny what he did for us. They don't believe he really BOUGHT us, but maybe he only rented us for awhile. Sure he'll take us, but if we have the slightest ding, he'll send us back or into the trash to be burned. The wonder and grace of our Lord is he bought as ASIS, dings and all - while we were YET sinners, Christ died for us. When we receive HIM he receives US. Amen!
And the price paid in full! I think the most shocking and also telling comment I saw was when someone said that Christ “made it possible” for us to get salvation. I couldn’t believe it but that’s the way they see salvation I guess. It makes it possible for us to earn it. I shudder to think that otherwise good people are going to be totally shocked one day.
It also amazes me that they can scoff at the idea of God's foreknowledge and ridicule teaching of God's predestination, yet, with the same breath, they'll profess that Mary was born without a sin nature and never ever sinned her whole life. They will then demand that this still allowed her free will in consenting to the incarnation. So this would have to mean, in Mary's case, God did NOT allow her free will choice because he already made her humanly perfect before she was born and she just couldn't ruin it all by saying, "No." They cannot have it both ways.
Whereas, we honor and love Mary because of her courage and faith in the face of certain human condemnation for being pregnant before she and Joseph "came together" and we call her blessed for the honor she was given to bear the Savior - something NO OTHER woman would ever experience. We don't, however, have to invent a dogma out of whole cloth that states she HAD to be perfect in order to bear Jesus. Nowhere in Scripture was this ever stated as a prerequisite and could not have any purpose other than a basis for false worship of a mere human creation in place of the Creator who deserves ALL praise and glory.
What is very interesting here is that if Mary was sinless, then she, by the very nature of mankind, wasn’t human. If she wasn’t human, then Christ had no human side. If He had no human side, then He could not have bore the sins for mankind as a human, yet without sin Himself. The whole Christ as 100% God and 100% man falls apart if Mary had no sin. Do they not think these things through to their logical conclusion? Or do they just grab a thought and make it so?
It’s a combination of things. The first and initiation of most of those things was the tendency to incorporate pagan beliefs and practices and adapt them to attempt to attract pagans to Christianity. Societies don’t want to give up long standing holidays, rituals and practices. Making Mary the queen of heaven is one of those. That started in Ephesus in 431. Ephesus was where the huge elaborate temple to Diana the queen of heave was. To attract those pagans to Christianity the queen of heaven mantra was adopted to placate partly the citizens but also the merchants who made their money from selling all the paraphernalia associated with the queen of heaven worship. I think it was in Pauls letter to the Ephesians that he actually mentions the merchants being upset.
Believe - HAS eternal life - isn't that what Jesus said?
If you are in an unrepentent state of sin at death, do you believe that you are saved anyway? Do you believe, as CB was so astonished by as a doctrine, in OSAS? No matter what you do?
I don't have any way of getting this concept to "sink into" your mind, but I know this has been discussed many, many times. I person who accepts Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, believes in him and receives God's gift of grace by faith HAS everlasting life. So, if one receives the gift by grace WITHOUT works, how could it still be by grace if works must be done to KEEP the gift? Either it is a gift or it is merited - it's NOT both, read Romans 11:6.
However, one who is born again into God's family is a new creation indwelt by the Holy Spirit and, as such, is being renewed every day. God works within us to conform us into the image of Christ. Yet it is all still walking by faith. If we sin - and we will as long as the old nature still remains - we have an advocate with the Father - Jesus Christ the righteous. We are found IN CHRIST, not having our own righteousness, but HIS righteousness. This is NOT saying we have a license to sin - hardly - because God disciplines us and chastises us because he loves us and wants what is best for our lives. He always desires that we come to him in repentance and confess our sins to him and he is FAITHFUL to forgive us our sins. No child of God can remain comfortable with sin in their life.
When your kids misbehave, do you disown them? You, being a human being, are capable of loving discipline and forgiveness because you love your children and they are yours - always. Are they ONLY your children when they're "good"? So, of course, God wants us to live holy lives and of course we hurt him when we wander off from his side, but he has promised that he will NEVER lose us, cast us off, forsake us or have anything or anyone pluck us from his hands. Now why do you think he said all that? If not to assure us of how much he loves us and cherishes us, then why say it at all? If, as you say, he WILL cast us away when we sin, then why did he even say he wouldn't? He included no exceptions in that, you know, Jesus didn't say he would lose nothing except the ones who do something wrong.
If God saves us by grace, then he keeps us by that same grace. I'm sorry you cannot receive that assurance or allow yourself to actually believe God's promises but, that's between you and him.
Excuse me, but you did far more than get a few pronouns mixed up, you based an argument from it - that of Mary being "special" in her ministry for God. Your words were:
And never forget the Wedding in Cana, where He tells the steward to do whatever she tells him to do. Wait, what? Almighty God telling a human being to do whatever another human being tells him to do? Sounds just a little special to me.
It sounds very much like "ridiculous personal extra Scriptural posts and surprised when caught". I appreciate it when you admit making mistakes, and we all do so from time to time, but CB is right about the "inscription over the cross" issue as well. You have brought this up many times and each time was to bring the reliability of Scripture into question.
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