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 do hope you get used to the bad jokes here, then. Those pursed lips are going to remain pursed...for eternity.
Not in my half of the church. Peter is accepted that way due to tradition, But in Orthodoxy, The Pope is not a Primate.
And yes, many heresies came about, and the Councils dealt with them all.
I am not confused. I accept the Holy Tradition on faith.
Hey wait a minute! Didn’t you wish me a great day earlier? I thought that meant you were..well...going. And here you are, again. How do you know they’re funny in heaven? Do the saints you pray to tell you jokes? Are you visited regularly by the Saint of Stand-up? SURELY you guys MUST have a saint for comedy. You have one for everything else..
So when did the split officially happen between RC and Orthodoxy? And do you believe that there was only one church operating before the split? That there were no more churches operating than Catholicism?
The Catholic Church agree with you? The Catholic Church is about God, not Protestants. If you happen to agree with the Church, then that is good. It's not about the Church agreeing with an apostate.
Now, with that said, the Church has indeed INRI over the head of Jesus on the Crucifix. You claim sola. You cannot claim the authority of the Church in some matters but not all. Either the Church is right or else it is wrong. That was the downfall of the cafeteria Catholics who thought that they could pick and choose. If the Church is wrong, you must repudiate everything about it. If it is right, then it is right.
John did indeed quote it, but who is to say that it was not written in Greek originally and then copied by Jerome et al into Latin? We may speculate, but you have written assuredly and, as with most Protestant assurances, there is nothing assured about it.
Let's not forget the Romans also lost to the Gauls, Visigoths, Vandals, Ostragoths, Arabs and Normans.
Crucifixion was the most severe form of execution imaginable by a very brutal people. Our word excruciating is derived from the words "ex cruce" meaning from the cross. It was reserved for enemies of Rome as a form of state sponsored terrorism to break the will of subjugated peoples. It was forbidden to crucify Roman citizens, regardless of their crimes which is why St. Paul was not crucified. The Church converted a symbol of terror and oppression into a symbol of hope and joy.
And did so for all time in such a great fashion.
Let us not forget the contingent here who disapprove of Nicea and refuse to consider anything that they did to be Christian.
In the odd world of the Reformation, Zwingli was really the odd one. Kinda like the goofy cousin that only gets invited to the family get togethers because you feel that you have to.
There are some comedians that belong in Heaven; there are others that belong in hell. I wonder where Dennis Leary will wind up...
Dennis Leary...now THAT’S a good question! Funny, but...the old ones are the funniest to me..Jack Benny, Milton Berle, Mo, Larry, Curly (I HAD to include them, they still make me laugh), I’m having brain fade here...who’s the guy who did the Naked Gun movies? HIM. He made me lol just to see his facial expressions. I think that’s what makes comedy great, facial expressions. And of course Roseanne. NOT. Just making sure you were paying attention ;). I love LOOKS for laughs more than the lines for laughs..
Well, let’s start here. Did John quote that Latin version or not?
John quoted the Latin inscription. IESUS NAZARENVS REX IVDAEORVM (Jesus of Nazareth The King of The Jews.)
And was Latin the Roman language and one of the languages Luke said were on the plaque or not?
John quoted Jesus the Nazarene King of the Jews, sure. That does not mean that John wrote it in Latin. We have it on faith that the entire NT was written in Greek. It was later translated into Latin. We are not sure when INRI became popular, but it was later on into the first millennium, after Jerome.
The problem with many people is that they have no clue as to the length of time that Church has been around and who did what and when and why. And Greek is the first language of the Church; Latin is the second. 10 points to you if you can tell me the third.
I wasn’t claiming the authority of the RCC. You are the one who thinks the RCC is the only one who is correct. If you think they are correct then you need to believe that indeed John was quoting the Latin version which was on the plaque.
>>John did indeed quote it, but who is to say that it was not written in Greek originally and then copied by Jerome et al into Latin?<<
So you are saying that John would have used the Greek version then someone else translated it into Latin? Are you so intent on not believing what scripture says that you are going to revert to the ridiculous?
I think it would be best to discontinue this conversation. It’s starting to feel like I’m discussing this with a delusional and it’s wasting my time. Believe as you wish. Have a nice day.
I don’t need your points or care to discuss with you any longer.
It couldn't be more clear. Jesus was sent by The Father and the Holy Spirit ALWAYS points us to Jesus, our Savior. Refusing to bow to 'it is ALL about JESUS' NOW has eternal consequences.
It is all about God, of whom Jesus is the Second Person.
John 14: 30 I will no longer speak much with you, for the ruler of the world* is coming. He has no power over me, 31but the world must know that I love the Father and that I do just as the Father has commanded me. Get up, let us go.v
One day knees will bow when it's too late. Talk about being willfully ready to fail! Being worldly in one's approach to the supernatural does not/will not/cannot work. It's because of Jesus we can even go to The Father and we must go in Jesus' Name.
Matthew 28: 19 "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit."
It's because of Jesus we can even go to The Father and we must go in Jesus' Name. It's not rocket science, Mark, and pride is ugly and damning. We are nothing without Jesus.
We believe in the Trinitarian God, pnsn. We are not Oneness Pentecostals who are arguably not Christian.
It gets so twisted and knotted and gummed up that it becomes impossible to sort it out. The question is: is it on purpose?
It's rude to point.
Nope, unfortunately that’s the way one must think in order to hold the RCC Churchianity as valid. It's a different influence than we go by.
Leslie Nielsen. Son of a Mountie. Brother of a Deputy Prime Minister of Canada.
I’m glad that you did not mention Curley Joe...
Curley Joe? Pfffffttttt. amateur.
John 3:14-18 14And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
16"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 17For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
He told us so we can know now, not have to wait until we get there to find out if we made it.
So I'm going to believe Him. You should try it some time.
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