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.
Somewhere there has to be a Protestant talking point memo or script because this verse is trotted out by Protestants in these threads ad naseum to try to justify Sola Scriptura but they must ironically distort its meaning to get it to mean what they say is does.
2 Timothy 3:16-17 does not say that the Scripture thoroughly equips or furnishes. It says that Scripture contributes (is profitable) to us becoming perfectly equipped (furnished). The Greek word for Profitable (ophelimos) does not mean sufficient or exclusive, it means contributory and beneficial. It in no way even suggests exclusivity, thoroughness or the ironically unscriptural doctrine of Sola Scriptura.
And of course, the answr to that is, “No, I have a problem weith quoting Ivo of Chatre without a link to the quoted passage, or the name of the book it is taken from. Because I don’t find the quote credible. l040-1115? EwALLY? you read that?
Then that will be my official question regarding this. Thanks. And thanks for all you do here.
smvoice
Pretty tuff to hear from one who was “in” shall we say isn’t it. It’s like a cult member who “came out” and tells the truth. Rather than kill the messenger you may want to study why he feels that way and what he found that causes him to believe as he does today.
I did not address individual Freepers. I made my comments about the group of "Anti-Catholic" bigots. I don't see how you can isolate any one of the group that flock to these threads with respect to my posting.
I think a bunch of those quote from de Rosa are made up out of whole cloth.
No, you are posting fables. Joseph’s ancestor was Jeconiah, the brother of Jehoiachin whose father was also Josiah.
"and Josiah the father of Jeconiah and his brothers at the time of the exile to Babylon. After the exile to Babylon: Jeconiah was the father of Shealtie" Mat 11, 12
Actually my problem is with those who lie about actually having been in the Church and repeatedly portray the most outlandish lies as Catholic doctrine. I don't have to make the post about any individual Freepers. The liars know who they are as do those of us who really do know Catholic doctrine.
This is getting ridiculous. Who the *&%^$ is Ivo of Chatre, and why am I being accused of not linking to a quoted passage that has nothing to do with the post 294. No really, this is bordering on insanity. I post my own words, if they are someone ELSE’s words, I give the author and the Book and the page. I am tired of being accused of taking someone else’s words as my own because Miss Judith Anne doesn’t find it “credible”. Tough toe-nails. Ivo of Chatre, I would be ROTFLOL is this wasn’t so STOOPID. And YES, I am making it personal. Judith Anne did when she accused me of using someone’s quote without a link.
How original of you. I hadn’t heard of him before but I’m going to do a little reading. I might get some pointers.
I see the exact same tactics used by the Mormons against those who have left the LDS and expose its errors and true teachings.
The pejoratives of *anti* and *hater* are tossed about with as much regularity as they are here. It’s always attack the messenger time.
Return to the issues.
Your post 169 references: Vicars of Christ: The Dark Side of the Papacy by de Rosa. I quoted from it. It appears to be foll of rank falsehood.
If you don’t know what you are referencing, it woulc be better not to list titles and authors.
Sorry, I had begun my post before seeing yours.
Judith Anne, my advice to you is to get on down the road, to another poster. I really can’t use your advice on how to list titles and authors. But thanks for your concern.
Mary's genealogy is mentioned nowhere in Scripture unless you ignore what it actually says in Luke 3 and presume that Heli was Joseph's father-in-law. Joseph's geneaology is irrelevant because he was not Jesus' biological father.
When one puts their entire eternal future in the hands of a church any attack on that church becomes personal. If their faith is in the RCC rather than in Christ then if the RCC is somehow proven in error according to scripture it’s deadly to their eternity. If I was in a church and there was error according to scripture I left but if their faith is tied to the church rather than Christ that’s not an option. And they wonder why I believe in Sola Scripture. I know that’s Gods word. No one can be really sure if the RCC’s word is.
Foll you say?
Where’s Enoch, and I don’t mean whether he’s presently ‘walking with God’?
Enoch was actually referenced by Jesus in the Bible, yet the book is not a part of the Canon (1 or 2Enoch).
This I have never understood.
But they pale in comparison to the invectives hurled at those who leave Protestantism to join the Catholic Church.
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