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.
Because it seems the very Book you are studying is not one the Catholic Church takes literally. What good is Bible study if the Book you are studying is not considered the truth?
True. Seeing as this thread started on October 23, almost a month ago, I wonder how our "new" friend even found this since it wouldn't show up in a list of Religion Forum threads until at least a few dozen screens. Maybe our FRiend as been following along all this time. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to see a reminder to always exhibit love in our discourses, but I question why only now this exhortation to love suddenly shows up. We sure could have used it back when non-Catholics were being compared to single-celled scum dwellers or our contributions likened to human waste. Which brings to the forefront that we don't seek to, nor want to, think of our opponents in such derogatory ways but would prefer to, rather, respectfully, as best we are able, speak the truths that we are convinced comes from God.
Who said it wasn’t the truth?
And, don’t tell me. You’re a literalist?
I won't do it, but that doesn't mean the information doesn't exist. If you are too lazy to look it up for yourself then I can't help you, but I do note you have no hesitation to dumpster dive to prove your own points. You put up a strawman. I lit it on fire.
Straw man? Showing two distinct proven errors in books the CC uses is a straw man?
I’m afraid I have to tell you. YES, I’m a literalist. Because God is Omniscient, Omnipotent, and Omnipresent, I am a literalist. Problem?
It would appear so...or maybe on vacation and just decided to come back a changed man/woman thus the name change..if so.
Time does always tell but it seems the "high five" made more of a statement than anything else.
Your Bible Study Class must be a real hoot.
Tell me: where is the right hand of God the Father?
It’s not a strawman. It’s a SNOWMAN. Made from the snow job they’ve done on the “faithful”.
And:
“Because God is Omniscient, Omnipotent, and Omnipresent, I am a literalist. “
Is another one of your non sequiturs.
Where is heaven?
You tell me, literally of course.
Do you think heaven is a literal place?
I'm always seeing this thread when I visit FR just because I have the "comments" rather than "articles" tab selected. Occasionally I'll dip in (like now) to see where this, uhh, interesting thread is currently heading.
Literal place is a vague term. Be more precise.
And is God the Father’s right thumb omnipresent also, or localized?
If you are a literalist you should have an answer from Genesis to where heaven is.
It is not a nonsequiture. Because God is Onmiscient, Omnipotent, and Omnipresent, I believe He created the earth in 6 literal days. And I believe this present earth is about 6000 years old. And I believe “He hath chosen us in him BEFORE the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love.” Eph. 1:4.
For the record, I do not support the data in opposition to Exodus or Genesis and in that regard I am consistent. I merely pointed to its existence.
I do not point to "history" to refute one part of the Bible that provides "difficulties" to Protestantism and then condemn "history" that similarly impeaches Old Testament literalism.
Interpreting the entire Bible entirely literally, or any other way or not at all for that matter, does not follow from God’s omniscience, omnipotence or omnipresence.
That’s why your statement is a non sequitur.
Not to a literalist. Only to those who want to take what they like and ignore or change what they don't like.
Is the Eucharist a literal changing of the wafer and wine into the body and blood of Christ? Or is it a "vague term" also, to Catholics? Of course you believe THAT is literal. But heaven? That's a "vague term"...???
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