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.
How are you able to know what someone believes? Do we have statues of Paul in our yards? Do we pray to Paul? Do we ask Paul to intercede on our behalf to God? Do we claim Paul was bodily assumed into heaven? Of course not. NONE of these things are true. They are ridiculous and obscene to anyone who understands God's Word. And yet, ALL these things are true in the case of Mary and the Catholic Church.
We can see the fruits of your beliefs, Judith Anne. Everywhere. Every day. In every saint you name for the day. In every prayer you post here for Mary. In every picture that is posted that shows people falling down prostrate on the ground at Mary statues. Or journeying to Lourdes or Fatima to be "healed". In your church's official writings and doctrines concerning Mary. It could go on and on. But you get the message.
It is not ignorance to actually SEE what we are seeing. THe ignorance would be to SEE it happening and denying that it is so. It's common sense, not some secret "knowledge" that produces the proof necessary for discerning truth from a lie.
And if that results in your claiming we have "malice" toward the RCC, then you are misunderstanding what "malice" means. We have not invented the Mary, queen of heaven. Your Church has. If we had just made this stuff up, it would be "malice".
The double standards we see from the Catholics is absolutely stunning.
Hey! It was CB, not me, who said that you have to take people at their word. I’m just taking dispensationalists at their word. Christ came for the Jews only, it was Paul who came for the gentiles, right?
Oh, you let a girl talk for you. Got it.
There’s an old saying....
Actions speak louder than words.
Anyone can SAY that they’re not worshiping Mary or the saints, but when they make images of them, bow down to them, light candles to them, pray to them, it makes it awfully hard to take their WORDS at face value. After all, people can say anything......
Besides, in the second commandment, the prohibition was against making images and bowing down to them and serving them. God didn’t say it was OK to do those things if you weren’t *really* worshiping them in your heart but rather that you were just honoring them.
God recognized that the actions told all anyone needed to know about the heart.
How are you able to know what someone believes? Do we have statues of Paul in our yards? Do we pray to Paul? Do we ask Paul to intercede on our behalf to God? Do we claim Paul was bodily assumed into heaven? Of course not. NONE of these things are true. They are ridiculous and obscene to anyone who understands God's Word. And yet, ALL these things are true in the case of Mary and the Catholic Church.
Likewise you could substitute the word Bible for Paul. We're constantly accused of worshiping the Bible because we recognize it as the final authority, by the members of a church that recognizes the magisterium as the final authority.
If the recognition of an authority is worship, then Catholics likewise worship the pope and magisterium since they elevate it to at least the level of Scripture if not beyond. After all, since the Catholic church *wrote* the Bible, it seems to feel that it has the right to dictate how it's interpreted..
They are so busy being “outraged victims” of “disinformation” and “lies”, they forget the malice they continually post toward us. And when we present proof of our points by God’s Word, then we are accused of being ignorant of the RCCs teachings. We compare Scripture with Scripture, and Scripture with RCC teachings, and come away with the assurance that His Word is Truth. If that is called “malice”, then so be it.
Whoa! Sexist much?
Pointing out what is blindingly obvious is not malice.
I am not the one who said you have to take people at their word. I am the one who said that only God knows the heart and what people really believe. CB denied that, and evidently you all agree that you know people’s hearts and minds, and know as well as God does what they believe.
Congratulations. God will certainly be surprised to hear it. And amused, I would guess.
>>>>Whoa! Sexist much?
Yes, I am. I have never been a feminist.
God will certainly be surprised to hear it.
You know what God is thinking????? You know His heart?
Or what we post from scripture isn’t being used correctly. It’s incredible. It’s as if what scripture says isn’t really what scripture says.
***as our souls are perfected***
Did you miss that part of my post.
I know our souls are redeemed, our bodies will be resurrected and both will be made perfect in Christ.
The new that has come is the covenant through the body and blood of Christ.
You and metmom are exactly right. Either we’re accused of worshipping the Bible, Paul, or not using scripture “correctly”. Where I come from that’s called “bobbing and weaving” to avoid the truth. Or trying to change the subject. I made a comment on a post last night about “longsuffering not being my strong point.” Lest anyone misunderstand, “longsuffering” is NOT another word for compromising. Patience is a virtue, but compromise is allowing a lie to remain, for the sake of ‘peace’. We are not called to play nice. Otherwise why be told to put on the whole armour of God? He would have instructed us to wear white gloves and pearls had He wanted a high tea commission of believers.
***Wasn’t Paul martyred for his faith?***
That would be a Catholic myth according to those who think if it isn’t written in Scripture it did not happen.
There is no historical or Biblical record of Paul’s death.
Your memory is unclear. Post #2254 and no there was no reply from you.
No more than you do.
.
>>>We are not called to play nice
Only by Christ, Matt 7:12. Of course, Paul didn’t say it, so maybe you don’t care.
The belief that our souls will inhabit a different body than the one we had when God gave us that soul sounds a lot like “reincarnation” to me.
From the moment of conception our souls and bodies are united and remain so until our death. The soul we are given by God at that moment is immortal. The body is mortal.
“I will raise you up on the last day.”
“For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:
Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”
The dead in Christ shall rise first, and together with them we shall meet the Lord and ever be with the Lord.
Answer me this.
If the body God has united with our soul is not the body which is resurrected, what happens to those who are still alive when Christ comes?
Do they shed the body they have for the new one?
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