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.
FWIW, smvoice DID give a source for the information.
It was this.....
-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.
and this.......
-Vatican II. The Code of Canon Law. Coriden , et al., op. cit. Canon 212, Section 1.
When cults are studied, The Code of Canon Law and Catholic World Magazine, in addition to other RCC doctrines and deceits are covered. The CCC, the history of the RCC, the false doctrines, the heresy, Rev. Chapters 17 and 18. Yep, they’re all covered.
Yes, and we learned that the 1871 edition of Catholic World is part of his/her Bible Study Class.
Sure, part of your Bible Study Class.
Or course that’s where you found it.
yes, certainly, that’s the ticket.
Really glad you remembered where you got it from.
The whole purpose of linking to sites is to prevent copyright infringement. I don’t see that that is an issue with either of the two documents provided, no matter what the websites they were gleaned from.
It the material posted at those websites was the actual work of that website, yeah, copyright laws would be an issue, but those other websites used it as well from another source so it is not their material that they have a copyright to.
A magazine from the 1800’s is well past copyright laws and does The Code of Canon Law from Vatican II is pretty much public domain.
Hey, I understand that the comments made by both sources are an embarrassment to the Catholic church, but that doesn’t justify this kind of behavior to try to get them pulled.
YOu people are really too much. Of course, studying cults would be of no interest to the RCC. Believe as you will. I really don’t care. God knows. And He will say when you or Judith Anne stand before Him: “You THOUGHT. And you were wrong.”
THIS time people have seen the quote/link connection for themselves. Anyone should be able to live with that. Those too sensitive for the open forum should stick with the caucus threads.
“Either let me set Judith Anne straight once and for all, or ban me.”
I vote for neither.
As far as “taking pleasure in the continuing accusations” I have not accused you of anything, nor would I take pleasure in doing so. That is, in itself, an ugly accusation. I forgive you.
On open threads, thin-skinned people are the disruptors, according to the RM.
I find the whole episode humorous really.
Like watching a contortionist get stuck for a couple of hours.
thanks.
Your vote doesn’t count. You are either going to stop accusing me of visiting bannned, nefarious websites and gleaning information from them, or shut up about your “opinions” of where the information came from, or PROVIDE THE SMOKING GUN. When the acknowledgments are CLEARLY spelled out, you have no excuse for your constant accusations. And the acknowledgments ARE CLEARLY SPELLED OUT. There is nothing “thin-skinned” about being accused of stealing or lying. You need God’s forgivenss, Judith Anne. On more than just this matter.
ROFLOL!!!
The fruit of Catholicism.
And they can’t figure out why people leave the Catholic church or aren’t interested in *swimming the Tiber* and coming back.
Unbelievable...
I pointed out that a google search of the first line of your quote yielded the first two results. I informed everyone. You became upset.
I forgive you.
Leave copyright investigation up to the moderators. To avoid flamewars like this in the future, if you question the source, let me know by Freepmail.
Do not badger another Freeper. That is also "making it personal."
>>>>>There is nothing “thin-skinned” about being accused of stealing or lying.
Sure there is. Catholics are accused all the time of idol worship, necromancy, leading people to hell, vain repetitions, and somehow we cannot answer back directly because that would be against the rules.
Surely you can handle a little google website attribution. It’s not like we said you were a cult or anything like CB says about the Catholic Church.
Amd, God bless you.
Even worse: a cult in Bible Study Class.
:)
:)
I posted before I saw the RM’s comment. No apology will be forthcoming.
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