Reformation Day – and What Led Me To Back to Catholicism

The Catholic Thing ^ | 10/28/11 | Francis J. Beckwith

[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.

[Jvette]

***Deny the indwelling fullness of the Holy Spirit by all true believers at your own peril.***

I have no fear, for I have not done that.

Thank you for your concern though:)

[metmom]

Holy fathers? “There is none holy as the LORD.”

*holy fathers*?

More like this CB.

Matthew 23:1-12 1Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, 2 "The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat, 3so practice and observe whatever they tell you— but not what they do. For they preach, but do not practice. 4 They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger. 5 They do all their deeds to be seen by others. For they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long, 6and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues 7and greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by others.

8 But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers. 9 And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. 10Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Christ. 11 The greatest among you shall be your servant. 12 Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

[metmom]

Jesus says differently...

John 17:17 Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.

[smvoice]

"Each individual must receive the faith and law from the Church..with unquestioning submission and obedience of the intellect and the will..We have no right to ask reason of the Church, any more than Almighty God..We are to take with unquestioning docility whatever instructions the Church gives us." -The Catholic World, August 1871, vol. xiii, pp. 580-89. The Catholic World reminding all Roman Catholics in the United States at the time of the First Vatican Council.

"The Christian faithful, conscious of their own responsibility, are bound by Christian obedience to follow what the sacred pastors, as representatives of Christ, declare as teachers of the faith or determine as leaders of the Church." -Vatican II. The Code of Canon Law. Coriden , et al., op. cit. Canon 212, Section 1.

Looks to me like "The CC says only it can tell people what is true." And that is definitely "denying the Holy Spirit that indwells all true."

[Judith Anne]

I cn’t think of anyone in your group that I would want to call
“instructor” so, no problem.

[D-fendr]

Your notion of each individual as the pillar and foundation of all truth is chaos, not the Church.

Even the small group on here can’t agree on truth.

[Jvette]

****The same people who would condemn liberals for not upholding the original intent of the founders of this country think nothing of placing their eternal future on the accuracy of word of mouth story telling.****

It is a good analogy, but you come to the wrong conclusion.

The founding fathers left us much that explains how and why they came to the list of rights and rules they formulated and codified within the Constitution.

It is the same with the Church and the early fathers who very soon into the second century began to teach what THEY had learned from the Apostles and how and why such things were written.

It was after nearly three centuries before the first attempt to codify the canon of Scripture occurred.

Do you imagine when the bishops came together with the intent to determine canon, they prayed for the guidance of the Holy Spirit? And perhaps, there was discussion which included some of the writings of those early Christian leaders and how what they said could be used as a benchmark for what was truly inspired Scripture and what was not?

It is ridiculous to suppose that they just came together and went through each of the thousands of writings and said, yes to this one and no to that one. There must have been some criteria which set apart those FEW which were actually chosen from the rest.

[CynicalBear]

>> No, they don’t. That is not true.<<

I’ll simply refer you to posts 3012 and 3009.

>> Another clanging falsehood.<<

Is water Baptism needed for salvation? How about confession to a priest?

>>>>>>The CC says only it can tell people what is true.<< >>Where do you come up with this stuff? It’s all false. Completely and utterly false.<<

I simply point you to post 3005

[Judith Anne]

Your passage is found on a copyrighted page online, here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=4BnmQWtxeAIC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

amd here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=4BnmQWtxeAIC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

Which is a website linked to jesus-is-savior.com, a forbidden site by the Religion Mod.

[Judith Anne]

Referring me to your posts as authoritative is not a convincing religious argument for your side. Better luck next time.

[CynicalBear]

>>There must have been some criteria which set apart those FEW which were actually chosen from the rest.<<

Of course. It needed to conform to Old Testament prophesy and totally agree with other parts of scripture and history. If they didn’t completely agree they could not be known to be inspired. That’s’ why many of the Apocryphal books were excluded. They have errors of history for one thing.

[smvoice]

THIS IS WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT RM. I gave the source, the page numbers, the volume number, the Canon number, the section number. I DID NOT GO TO A WEBSITE TO GET THE INFORMATION. AM I SUPPOSED TO RESEARCH EVERY WEBSITE BEFORE POSTING INFORMATION THAT IS LISTED IN THE RCC CODE OF CANON LAW, OR A CATHOLIC MAGAZINE? I CANNOT GIVE CREDIT TO A WEBSITE THAT I DON’T EVEN KNOW EXISTS. AND IF ONE WEBSITE THAT I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT LINKS TO ANOTHER WEBSITE THAT I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT, please tell me what I’m to do. I’m not yelling at you, RM, I’m YELLING IN GENERAL at the IMPOSSIBILITY of researching unknown websites so Judith Anne doesn’t come across them when she is seemingly researching forbidden websites. I will do as you say, but I CANNOT RESEARCH SOMETHING THAT I KNOW NOTHING OF.

[CynicalBear]

>>"Each individual must receive the faith and law from the Church..with unquestioning submission and obedience of the intellect and the will<<

That’s also one of the criteria for a cult.

[FamiliarFace]

Bookmarked for further reading.

[Judith Anne]

When I googled the first line of your quote:

Each individual must receive the faith and law from the Church..with unquestioning submission and obedience of the intellect and the will..We have no right to ask reason of the Church, any more than Almighty God..

Those are the first two sites that came up, a forbidden one, jesus-is-savior.com and the other one, which is copyrighted.

So your yelling excuse is kind of lame...difficult to believe. as it were...

[Judith Anne]

Oh, please.

[metmom]

JA: “Your passage is found on a copyrighted page online, here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=4BnmQWtxeAIC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

amd here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=4BnmQWtxeAIC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

Which is a website linked to jesus-is-savior.com, a forbidden site by the Religion Mod.”

****************************************************************************

A quick google search of both passages indicates NUMEROUS places where the quotes are found. It’s disingenuous to portray that the information can only be found at a banned website.

Here are other websites there the information can be found.

***********************************************************************

“Each individual must receive the faith and law from the Church..with unquestioning submission and obedience of the intellect and the will.” (etc)

Can be found at the following sites by a google search.
http://www.google.com/search?q=+Each+individual+must+receive+the+faith+and+law+from+the+Church..with+unquestioning+submission+and+obedience+of+the+intellect+and+the+will..&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

A sampling here for this passage and there are far more....
“The Christian faithful, conscious of their own responsibility, are bound by Christian obedience to follow what the sacred pastors, as representatives of Christ, declare as teachers of the faith or determine as leaders of the Church.”

http://www.ewtn.com/expert/answers/liturgical_laws.htm
http://www.st-joseph-foundation.org/cfd17-5.htm
http://www.angelfire.com/ky/dodone/Canonlaw.html

[smvoice]

Well, you better check it out with Judith Anne. You may be accused of going onto forbidden websites, unknown to you, on cults to come up with your criteria...

[Jvette]

Thank you for the links, I found them fascinating.

My point regarding Moses and the oral teachings was that Moses did not learn of God and the history of His people for the first time when He was given the Torah.

When God calls him from the bush, Moses knows who God is, he doesn’t need God to explain to him who I AM is. He already knew. He must have known from what had been passed down to him from his ancestors.

I must say, I found especially interesting the parts about the Oral Law. It seems very parallel to the Catholic Sacred Tradition.

[metmom]

Those are the first two sites that came up,

The FIRST two? Not the ONLY two?

IOW, there were more.

And how do you know what particular source smvoice used that you can make that accusation?

Nice......