Reformation Day – and What Led Me To Back to Catholicism

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.

believe Him, too. I just don't necessarily believe your interpretation. And I do not arrogantly proclaim my own salvation. He will do the Judging, not me.

Many times you have written that anyone who "proclaims" their own salvation is wrong or, even, sinful. You say you base this upon what Scripture says regarding the way our lives are lived and upon our obedience or not to the commandments of Jesus. You say you reject someone else's "interpretation" of Scripture when they claim assurance of their salvation. But you still state you DO believe God and what Scripture has to say. I would ask, then, how do you "interpret" the verses that say we CAN know we have eternal life? Such as:

1 John 5:13 may know

John 3:16 believes - when? One time deal? Or the whole way?

John 3:36. Ditto

Acts 15:11 believe

One last question, how different would your life be if you accepted the assurance of your salvation? Would it change anything that you are doing? Would you lose anything that you currently have? What would you lose?

Well, aside from violating what I believe Scripture and the Church says (and jeopardizing my soul), why not ask me why I don't believe in the two gods of the LDS, or the one god of the JWs?

Notice that the entire chapter 25 of Matthew concentrates on works? There is nothing about faith here, only faithfulness and works. Eternal hell is the reward for bad works.

Knowing that this is not the first time we have had this discussion, all I can do is present the truth God has revealed in Scripture and pray that the Holy Spirit opens your eyes and heart to the truth. Take a good hard look at the other passage you posted. Those who Jesus said he NEVER knew and whom he saw as goats, they were NOT people who were unreligious. In fact, they pleaded with Jesus to recognize ALL the mighty works they did for him but he told them, "I never knew you.". Not, "I knew you for a little while but you did bad things, so you're not my friends anymore.", Not, "Sure did appreciate all those things you did but it wasn't enough, you should have done more.". No, he said he NEVER knew them. Why might that be?

When you post the other passage about the sheep and goats, you fail to make a few crucial observances. First, they were ALREADY sheep OR goats. This account was not to determine what kind they were but to pass judgment. Secondly, you failed to place this event in a certain time frame. It cannot be speaking of the Judgment Seat of Christ, which is for believers only. See Romans 14:10 and II Corinthians 5:10. Then there is the Great White Throne Judgment, where all those who come out of the great tribuation are judged, both believers and unbelievers and they are judged in the final judgment and everyone whose name is not found in the Book of Life is cast into the lake of fire which is called the Second Death. Those "sheep" were the ones who were believers and who helped the "brethren" through the persecution of the Anti-Christ during the Tribulation. But even if you don't accept that there IS a tribulation, it still doesn't show that this judgment was what MADE them sheep or goats. They ALREADY were one or the other.

But ask yourself why John would write in Revelation words that contradict what he wrote in the Gospel According to John as well as his epistles? That is where context really counts. Knowing that the Holy Spirit was who Divinely inspired the Scriptures. And the Bible IS the infallible Word of God, despite what you have been told by those who want to supercede Holy Scripture.

Eternal hell is NOT the reward for bad works. It is the condemnation due ALL who have not received the redemption that is in Christ. We all deserve hell because we have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Hell is eternal separation from God and I don't care how "good" someone is or how many "good" works they have done, it can never be enough to pay for even one sin - not even a lie. No one goes to heaven based on their good deeds and no one goes to hell because of their bad deeds. We ALL have bad deeds and without the blood of Christ to pay the penalty of sin, we would ALL be doomed. You say:

We throw ourselves on His mercy, we do not pronounce it. We plead for our salvation, we not claim it. He Judges, we await His Judgement. Otherwise He is not Judge.

That is all we can do is surrender to Him and trust in his mercy and grace and he HAS pronounced it already. He has pronounced salvation through Jesus Christ, the righteousness of Christ that he gives to us as a gift if we only receive it, believe him, trust him and rest on his promises. We don't await the judgment between heaven or hell if we are his own, he takes that out of the equation.

There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus (Rom. 8:1)

Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life. (John 5:24)

Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. (Rom. 5:18)

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. (John 3:16-18)

I don't know of any such study or really how one would conduct it but the times in the OT when reading or writing is mentioned is not treated as an unusual skill. For example at Judges 8:13,14 when Gideon captures a man from Succoth. Both are able to read and write.

In Isaiah 10:19 one of the calamities coming upon Assyria was to be reduction of their trees to such a low number a young boy could write down a description of them.

Again in Isaiah 29:12 the words of the book would be as though sealed to the prophets and to others as though they were unlearned or unable to read. Both groups could read but would be hindered from doing so.

And there is David and men like Peter who came from lowly circumstances but were more literate than a large proportion of Americans.

But in none of these case was literacy treated as unusual or as a special skill.
Even in Deut.6:8,9 Israel is commanded to write the law on their door posts and gates. True, it was likely a figurative “writing” but such a command would have little meaning to a largely illiterate population.

So “I expect that literacy in nation of Israel was more common than most of us would think”.

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