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.
If the joke was actually funny, it wouldn’t have been a problem.
Okay. Just one sm question: You said that “St. Ignatius was bishop of Antioch,directly after St. Peter.” When was Peter bishop of Antioch? During what time frame of Acts?
Once again, I thank you for expressing so well whar I express so poorly.
I’ve said, a numbet of times, that I serve the poor out of love and gratitude to Christ my Lord. It just doesn’t get rhrough.
It depends on which side of the Tiber you are standing, Judith Anne...we laughed..but we did hear the wailing and gnashing begin from afar. The daily call of the “un-free”.
What on earth are you talking about? The joke wasn’t funny and the post made no sense.
Tradition says about 3 years before his death.
Luke 24:10 It was Mary Magdalene and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, and other women that were with them, which told these things unto the apostles.
Matthew 13:55 Is not this the carpenter's son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas?
Mark 6:3 Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us? And they were offended at him.
If they meant another Mary was that Mary also married to a carpenter?
In the following passage someone said His mother and brothers were outside wanting to speak with Him.
Matthew 12:46 While he yet talked to the people, behold, his mother and his brethren stood without, desiring to speak with him. 47 Then one said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to speak with thee. 48 But he answered and said unto him that told him, Who is my mother? and who are my brethren? 49 And he stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren!
Luke 8:19 Then came to him his mother and his brethren, and could not come at him for the press. 20 And it was told him by certain which said, Thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to see thee. 21 And he answered and said unto them, My mother and my brethren are these which hear the word of God, and do it.
Obviously that person was talking about His blood brothers or Jesus would not have thought to mention it. Now if Jesus truly was not their blood brother and corrected them did He also deny that Mary was His mother in Matthew 12?
Was He again talking about the multitudes He mentioned in Luke 8?
John 7:3 His brethren therefore said unto him, Depart hence, and go into Judaea, that thy disciples also may see the works that thou doest.
Again in Acts 1 Judas the brother of James is mentioned along with Mary His mother. Reference again Luke 24:10 where Mary is called the “mother of James”.
Acts 1:13 And when they were come in, they went up into an upper room, where abode both Peter, and James, and John, and Andrew, Philip, and Thomas, Bartholomew, and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon Zelotes, and Judas the brother of James. 14 These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren.
>> If you look up the original Hebrew, the word “brother” was an error in translation, the hebrew word meant close family member or possibly cousin.<<
Every time? Give me a break. You believe the CC if you want to but I’m calling blasphemy and lies.
>> It is believed that Joseph had children from another marriage.<<
“It is believed”? Deny all the references to Mary and Joseph’s other children and then claim “it is believed”? What utter blasphemy of the Holy Spirit who inspired those writers to clearly state that Mary had other children.
ROFL Prove me wrong. Show that each of those three languages all said the same thing. Now, if you do, you must also admit that you believe the scripture to be inaccurate. Which is it? Do Matthew, Luke, and John disagree showing that they were not inspired by the Holy Spirit to write what they wrote or were they each quoting a different language version?
So you’re saying that 3 years before Peter died, he was bishop of Antioch. Then he left there and St. Ignatius became the bishop there. And Peter went to Rome at that point? Is there an approximate date of his death?
I’m looking for where I said I cared what you do...
PS, I don’t have to worry about getting “dangerously close to becoming guilty of having an occasion to sin.” That’s clearly not something our separated sistren understand, anyway. Telling someone their so-called joke is not funny is an act of mercy.
The difference is that we consider the oral traditions to be equal to scripture. Protestants as a general rule do not accept that point.
YOU seem to have no idea how many “acts of MERCY” I could show to you, if I truly felt it was worth the time and effort. But you seem to be one who needs to shine brightly as a beacon for others. “Don’t go this way...”
Your reward will be great because Jesus himself came to serve such as these. Those who because of social status, poverty and physical deformity had been barred from the Temple. Let us not forget that the poor of spirit are in even more need of our charity and works as those poor materially.
I have been reading a lot lately about St. Peter Canisius and his efforts as a catechist during the counter-reformation. He rejected severe criticism of anti-Catholics teaching that we follow Christ's examples in dealing with them. He rejected Catholic attacks against Calvin and Melanchton with the words: "With words like these, we don’t cure patients, we make them incurable". In his letters to his Jesuit superiors he implored them;
"It is plainly wrong to meet non-Catholics with bitterness or to treat them with discourtesy. For this is nothing else than the reverse of Christ’s example because it breaks the bruised reed and quenches the smoking flax. We ought to instruct with meekness those whom heresy has made bitter and suspicious, and has estranged from orthodox Catholics, especially from our fellow Jesuits. Thus, by whole-hearted charity and good will we may win them over to us in the Lord."
"Again, it is a mistaken policy to behave in a contentious fashion and to start disputes about matters of belief with argumentative people who are disposed by their very natures to wrangling. Indeed, the fact of their being so constituted is a reason the more why such people should be attracted and won to the simplicity of the faith as much by example as by argument."
Ah, the crippled in spirit...the deformed in the soul...
Okay. Have a great day.
If you look to the Holy Catholic Church there is no controversy.
Does the Catholic cross not have the inscription INRI on it? Does that not stand for IESUS NAZARENVS REX IVDAEORVM (Jesus of Nazareth The King of The Jews)? And wasn’t that what John quoted? And also is that not Latin? Would that then mean that even the CC agrees with me on that point?
I can’t tell what these people think, but Christ is talking about the sins of OMISSION here — not doing things we could have done, not the sins of COMMISSION.
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