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.
Yet we are called to charity and compassion, to love, compassion and helping each other.
Only if you deny or dispense with Jesus’s ministry can you deny this with the hope of a clean conscience.
But only the hope. The Truth does not change.
There’s a scripture from Paul about that, if you see your brother hungry and naked, and say to him “Be well, stay warm” and do not give him food and clothing, you are serving the master of evil.
Do you not think sharing the gospel IS charity, compassion, love and helping each other? It is only our eternity. Everything else is temporary and will end with the next day of being hungry, or sick or lonely. I know what you are talking about, though. It is a combination of both. But without the gospel of God’s grace, everything else is fleeting. The truth does not change, indeed. And we are called to give the truth. ALL of God’s truth. Not just the parts that make the outward man feel good about his outward acts of kindness and charity.
Charity, Compassion, Christian Charity??? I think not, from the Anti-Popery Cabal. These would hang us or burn us for our devotion to Holy Mother Church. Remember how the republicans of Spain treated the Church. Don’t think for a MINUTE that there are not persons who would do the same in the name of bigotry against Catholics!
I’m not familiar with that scripture. Could you share the Book and scripture it is found in?
Now look at you, being all hateful against non-Catholics. You must have found all those 100 anathemas we proclaimed against the Catholic Church. One day you are going to see yourself as you claim others to be.
And you thought I would just click on a blind link from someone I don’t trust? LOL NOT.
So there you have it. Works, but only as long it isn't too much work. Claiming that what can be done anonymously from the comfort of an easy chair with absolutely no personal sacrifice or risk is answering the call to Beatitude is an insult to those who gave everything.
Badgering and insulting other Christians with an alternate interpretation of Scripture is not an act of charity. It is an act of hubris and vanity. You will not find Grace where you find none of the Fruits of Grace.
The way some of you share the gospel, using it as a club, it’s definitely not charity, compassion, love or help. For the love of God, don’t bother with outward acts of kindness and charity, instead, just make fun of people who do them, impugn their motives, tell them they’re afraid of hell.
And don’t look in the mirror, it might make you uncomfortable.
After all, they’ll just be hungry again tomorrow.
I look at your last posts each, and I ask you: where are the fruits you claim you have? Standing back and letting you post is the best way to show others what hypocricy means. I’ll leave it at that..
Where are YOUR fruits of the spirit? Honestly, all of you, ALL of you, post hatred day after day, and then act all indignant and superior when you reap what you sow.
I am not impressed. Go preach to some poor naive fool who believes everything they read on the internet
Like I said, I’ll just stand back and let you show your fruits of the spirit. And Beatitude Attitude.
Nobody is saying THAT. What we are saying is that just because it isn't mentioned doesn't mean you can presume it did and teach it as truth.
Anything not mentioned in Scripture is suspect until proved otherwise.
Do you believe that Moses’ soul went to heaven and God gave him a new body to return to earth? And if you do, where is that in Scripture?
Double standard much?
That would be the only logical conclusion to be made especially since Scripture CLEARLY says that Moses died and was buried. TO conclude anything else has to deny the clear, plain statements made in Scripture.
Why Moses and Elijah?
Jesus came to fulfill the Law (Moses) and the Prophets (Elijah)
Matthew 5:17 "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.
I think there is no clearer illustration of what warped Christianity Dispensationalism is:
“Everything else is temporary and will end with the next day of being hungry, or sick or lonely.”
This extreme devaluation of Jesus’s ministry is it’s own distorted theology, yet it does dovetail with Easy Believerism, I am Church and Just Me and the Bible theology.
Enoch and Elijah were specifically said to have been taken up before they died.
It’s dangerous to presume the same for anyone someone happens to feel like presuming it for. It’s too easy to lead to deception going into areas that cannot be clearly supported by Scripture.
Yes, of course. But in Dispensationalism they believe there is different gospel delivered only to Paul and that it is not the same as Jesus taught to His apostles and disciples.
It is this imagined different gospel that Dispensationalists care most about, not the one we know: the single gospel Jesus lived and taught.
“Smackvoice”: I consider you about one step above Nestorius. you will reap what you sow. In the meantime, I won’t be losing any sleep over your rancor.
Good thing you’re so smart. Clicking that link would have caused you to melt.
Citing chapter and verse like it is an incantation or a municipal code on a traffic citation will not get anyone into heaven, but Blessed are those who live the Beatitudes. If today anyone on these threads has not worked to feed the hungry, comfort the sick, clothe the naked, give hope to the hopeless or defend the unborn then their posting is done only for public consumption and not for the glory of God.
Good. Now about those random verses about rocks and keys and remitting and binding sins.........
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