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.
My question is why do people think that God is dealing with tribes, or groups, or nations right now? He is clearly dealing with individuals. NOT groups. The RCC claims salvation can be found only in the Catholic Church. What do they think? That they are going to be bussed into heaven and stand as a group before God under the RCC banner? Pffffttt. I’m sure they find great comfort in numbers, believing God sees them that way. But they could not be more wrong. He will again deal with nations, as soon as Israel’s blindness is removed and She begins her long trek back to His original plan for Her. A kingdom of priests and a blessing to all nations. Until that time though, it is about each individual accepting the finished work of Christ for his salvation.
*cultivated*?!?!
Boy are you being generous.
Imposed by brainwashing is more like it. With threats of eternal damnation for enforcement.
I'm mostly grateful you didn't claim you got it from your Bible Study Group - since you don't get anything from websites. :)
The no condemnation is for NOW. Not later. NOW.
Interesting comment CB....because without submission there couldn’t be the control which will be prevelant then.
Needless saying many of the cults and false religion “followers” are set up for that already. In the process of their indoctrination often times critical thinking is all but seared out of an individual in slow and easy increments generally stuctured in such as way as to successfully hide the deception they are under... so much so the individual does not identify this occurring.
I find it interesting that volumes of literature is encouraged to be read and or purchased as well in many of the cults/false religions. Anything to divert away from the scriptures themselves so that the individual relys on authors and their experiences, and teachings, rather than determine even if what they are being led thru is truth or not.
Thus they are set up to believe when the great deception does come. muslims of course will fall right into line, and New Agers and many of the Eastern faiths...mormons as well and all who have sought leadership and authority apart from the Lord and His word as their standard of measuring truth or falsehood.
I did get it from my Bible Study group. That is the point, dear D-fendr. Sourced ackowledgments of information, including information from your very own CCC, Councils, doctrines, and traditions, gathered together to study a particular topic and compare it to what the Bible says. In this case, the coming one world religion, tribulation, anti-Christ and false religions claiming they are the true religion. All being cults in that they follow another gospel, another Jesus, another spirit, another doctrine, etc. In particular Roman Catholicism as a cult and Rev. 17 and 18, describing the Whore who sits upon many waters. Expect more, and be sure to read the acknowledgments, as they ARE sourced and detailed. :)
Does your Bible Study Group ever get around to the Bible?
Our RCIA facility is pretty tidy, but I'll bet there are a lot of Bible Study centers with stacks of 30 year old news papers from cities all across the country laying around....[sarc]
Not to drag this on any more than it should be, but why can't you seem to accept that the comments made were not from banned sites but from the publications that were given as stated? I even showed that one of them could have been verbatim from the Vatican website. If all are to be burdened with doing a web search of every line of a quote or source just to make sure it has NEVER been repeated at any of those sites, then nobody could hardly ever post anything. If that is the motive, then I think some of you need to avoid open Religion Forum threads because, until that becomes the rule, practically everything may disturb you.
It is noticeable that not one has commented yet on the passages that speak of the blind obedience expected from your Magesterium. I think this smokescreen of offended feelings is not working as expected.
You’re not reading my posts closely. Comparing what the Bible says to what “religious organizations” teach is the only way to determine a true belief from a lie. It is the Bible that allows discernment. Otherwised you would be blown around by every wind of doctrine that comes along. It IS the Bible that shows the lies of the deceivers.
The big shocker for so many of them is going to come when so many people turn up missing.
For sure.
And the Westminster Confession of Faith was the main topic of my last Bible Study Group.
Looks like some make the moniker Protestant into a doctrine: Sola Recusatio.
Of course I wasn't asking you to believe in the two gods of Mormons or the one of JWs, was I? I was asking you to read for yourself what Scripture actually says rather than what someone tells you it says. Maybe you SHOULD examine why your Church would anathematize you for believing what Scripture says. What you can read for yourself. Ask why they would have you believe THEM over what God clearly says in Scripture.
The only alternative lays with the accuser. Prove it or shut up. If you don't like my sources, go to the RM to get it straight. But do NOT accuse me of going someplace I haven't been in order to get information that I've already sourced. That's the heighth of stupidity. Like you said, NOTHING would ever be posted. Maybe that's the point, in some cases. They don't care where they come from, I don't think. They just don't want the messages given. Even when they come from their OWN CCC or Vatican Councils, or doctrines, or traditions. It must be embarrassing to see it written in black and white. That's all I can figure out.
Seems your Bible Study Group doesn’t have much time left for what your religious organizations teaches – or the Bible.
THAT’S Sirach??? Sounds more like the Koran.
I wouldn't say to no avail.
I think you can use the "Bible Study Group" source bit on some here ad infinitum.
It depends on how a church uses it’s time. Some use it to teach the Bible, rightly divided and comparing Scripture with Scripture. Others use their time to turn wafers and wine into the “Body and Blood” of Christ. I’m sure that leaves very little time for actually reading what the Bible says. And learning how to become effective workmen who need not to be ashamed when they stand before God. You know, being ambassadors for Christ, sharing the good news of the gospel of your salvation. And preaching the reconciliation of God and man through Christ.
Have you ever asked yourself how we can take as credible anything said by those who claim to have been Catholic and rejected it when everything they say about the Church is such a compete fabrication? There is no "blind obedience" demanded of anyone.
CCC 144 - To obey (from the Latin ob-audire, to "hear or listen to") in faith is to submit freely to the word that has been heard, because its truth is guaranteed by God, who is Truth itself. Abraham is the model of such obedience offered us by Sacred Scripture. The Virgin Mary is its most perfect embodiment.
No, when I’ve been in Bible Study Groups, and I’m in one now, we actually study the Bible.
I guess it’s a compliment that some other groups obsess over the Church; and, I’m grateful that I have yet to be in a Bible Study that deemed modernist ideas such as Dispensationalism worth spending time on.
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