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.
Jesus quoted the historical errors? Would you please point those out for me? Give me the quote of Jesus and the historical error He was quoting. Either that or we can just understand that that was just an attempt to give legitimacy to a lie.
In deed we are. There is much about everyday life of the times that is unknown today. Peter was obviously not educated in the polished and elegant way Paul was (Peter being “ordinary and unlettered”) but write he did and movingly so.
How would Peter, and others like him, have learned to read?
Jewish tradition and Torah placed the responsibility for educating a son squarely on the shoulders of the father.
Would he hire a copyist? Do it himself? Would a priest do so? Send the boy to an informal “school”?
The exact means is not always clear but literacy, at least for males, was connected with obedience to God in Israel. “Write ye this song...” (Deut. 31:19)
“Peter? A fisherman? Unlikely” Being a very devote Jew why “unlikely”?
Where that 97% figure comes from I've no idea but consider some ancient libraries like the one found at Ugarit in Syria. It dates from around the 1300-1400 b.c. or the vast library of Ashurbanipal of the 7th. cen. b.c.
This collection of tablets numbered 20 to 30 thousand and covered everything from the most sacred to the most mundane of commercial notes and recipes. Clearly many people were scratching bills and notes of all kinds on shards and clay tablets routinely.
And what was the occupation of one the most honored men of Jewish history? A copyist, name of Ezra.
The motivation to read God's word for ones self is and was a powerful motivation to learn to read.
How about the history contained in books of the Bible that have been proven to be correct? There is ample Biblical evidence that those books contain historical error and much of it has already been posted.
So Jesus quoting the Deuterocanonicals makes Him wrong and you right?
So who pretends to be a scholar?
Got some proof to back up that assertion?
And if I did, who would be the first one to go whining to the RM about personal comments? No thanks.
Jesus quoted the Deuterocanicals. That makes them authoritative in my eyes and the eyes of the Church all by themselves. If you require the NT to quote every OT book as indicating authority, then you must remove Ezra, Nehemiah and several others from your already redacted Bible.
Actually, the Eastern Church has always accepted the apocrypha as scripture. LONG BEFORE THE ROMAN COUNCIL OF TRENT.
Where did MB say Jesus quoted historical error? This is a typical tactic of yours, to falsely quote someone. A very good reason to ridicule your posts.
Would you also claim that because the Koran quotes portions of scripture that we should use the Koran also?
>>>>>>Would you also claim that because the Koran quotes portions of scripture that we should use the Koran also?
Are you claiming that the Koran quoting scripture is equal to Christ quoting scripture?
Coming from you, that would not surprise me.
My point was that simply because Jesus said something similar to what is written in one of those books does not make that book the inerrant word of God. Errors in those books would prove that they are not the inerrant word of God so can not be trusted.
What is the problem with Christ quoting the apocrypha? Do you know?
Well that’s not what you said in 3401, at all.
I would prefer not to discuss anything with you.
Follow those teachers if you wish, but I'll stick with that old time religion: the Church proclaiming Christ.
One of the reasons that Protestants claim to reject the Deoterocanonicals was that they presumed that they were never written in Hebrew. That has historically been proven wrong. The Essene Canon revealed in the Dead Sea Scrolls contains significant portions of these books.
The reasons that Luther and Protestantism wants / needs the Deuterocanonical Books excluded is that they clearly support legitimate claims of the Church that are damaging to the Reformation. Most troubling to Protestants are Purgatory, alms giving for the atonement of sins (indulgences), praying for the dead, petitioning “saints” in Heaven for their prayers, worshiping (doulia) angels, and the existence of Raphael as the Healing Angel.
That makes sense. Thanks
I’m sure they will be tickled pink to have this “free” advertising done for them. Maybe they’ll give you a discount. Couldn’t hurt to ask, right?
As if. I’m sure they’re proud to be linked to Obsma.
How to know which of the twelve tribes you belong to
and
How to say "endure to the end" in Hebrew
Certainly if this conclusion (proven false) is not the definition one is using for sola scriptura, then the point is moot. But this is not what I've seen from posters on here.
NO ONE said that the Bible is "all that there is" nor that it "contains all truth" or that "nothing is needed but the Bible".
Though it's only somewhat based on my point, I still would not make even that statement on here and be certain no one agrees with some or part of it. Let's see.
How about it, Sola Scriptura proponets? Would you agree or disagree with all or part of these statements:
The Bible is all that there is; The Bible contains all truth; Nothing is needed but the Bible.Clearer still:
Would you agree or disagree that:
1) Scripture alone, by itself, with nothing else, is entirely sufficient for doctrine, reproof, correction and instruction in righteousness.Who here agrees/disagrees with 1? 2? 3?
and,
2) This is what sola scriptura means.
and,
3)This is proven true by 2 Timothy 3:16-17.
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