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.
>>>>>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.
LOL! I missed that! Honestly, I doubt it really happened.
I have an Orthodox Bible. I do nOT have 4 Maccabees.
There, fixed it for YOU.
It’s beyond me how otherwise intelligent people would take the words of a writing that obviously has inaccuracies and errors and think it’s the infallible words of an infallible God. I think it’s sad to watch as people try to defend using those obviously erroneous books.
Science has never shown scripture to be in error. On the contrary, in every case it has shown it to be correct.
I find it amazing that Catholics will find an error in some writing from Protestants and proclaim that all from that site or author is to be discounted yet when the books they use as scripture are shown to have errors they will discount those errors or even claim they don’t exist.
Does that answer your question?
I don’t need any Catholic source or official position to understand that for a person to hold a book or writing to be infallible that has obvious errors simply because some fallible man says he should it’s evidence that that person has indeed given over his deductive reasoning to someone else.
Were this an isolated incident you might have an appeal to my sympathies for being duped, but literally every thread of any length has multiple and even repeated incidents of this sort of thing happening. If your disdain for the Church is so legitimate you ought to be able to criticize and reject the Church and its doctrines on its own merits, but don't or can't without looking foolish or petty. Why don't you just step back and ask yourself a few basic questions and reflect and pray on the answers before proceeding:
-Do you believe or expect anyone else to believe that God needs to lie to reach Catholics or that He would approve of these deceptions?
-Who is the “Father of Lies” and who do you think these falsehoods actually serve?
-Why is it that there needs to be and are so very many false assertions made about Catholicism?
-Why is it necessary to go to the extremes of having to hide these lies within falsified documents and attributions?
-Why is the intensity of this hatred so great that there had to be a list of banned websites and sources within the Religion Forum when there is to corresponding listing of Catholic sponsored anti-Protestant sites and material?
-Why are there so very many anti-Catholic pejorative terms and monikers when there are almost none by Catholics against other faiths?
-Why is it that you and so many others are so very eager to accept and repeat these falsified factoids about the Church without verification?
-Have you ever considered why Catholics continue to come to this cesspool of lies and go to the trouble sifting through the garbage to sort fact from fiction over and over again?
Perhaps you should go back and read the thread and then repost in a more contextual and honest manner. There was a refutation of the Deuterocanonical Books because there was some "historical" information apparently at odds within them. I pointed out that that was not a valid standard because there is some "historical" information at odds with Exodus and Genesis that I similarly reject.
So which one of these writers told a falsehood?
Judith 1:1 While King Nebuchadnezzar was ruling over the Assyrians from his capital city of Nineveh,
Nebuchadnezzar didn’t rule over the Assyrians he was King over Babylonia.
2 Kings 24:1 While Jehoiakim was king, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia invaded Judah
It is the Holy Spirit which comes upon the bread and wine just as He came upon Mary to conceive Jesus.
It was flesh which died for our sins on Calvary, flesh and blood which suffered so that we might live.
Not just any flesh though, as no man since Adam could redeem us.
Jesus used parables, but He often was more direct with His Apostles and when they did not understand the message behind the parable, they asked.
When Jesus speaks of His body and blood as TRUE food and drink, many left Him. He asks those who did not, what they thought of this “hard saying”, but He never indicates that what they have heard is a parable or symbolic.
Jesus spoke quite alarmingly about the Bread of Life and never once tempered what He said. But, on the night before He was betrayed, He showed them how He would fulfill His words and how they were to remember Him.
Good job of spitting out a verse, which does not mean what you think it means to deflect from my question.
I will ask again.
Why does Jesus say what He says about eating His flesh and drinking His blood?
No, it actually raises more questions, like why you would continue to post a LIE after is has been thoroughly refuted in this very thread. That passage is NOT contained within the book quoted. I actually posted the entire chapter of that book in post #3397 and it simply is not there.
The falsified version that you reposted does appear, however on many anti-Catholic websites and in posts on Free Republic by anti-Catholics apparently not interested in the truth.
It is a labor of love, lol:)
We now declare and expressly enjoin that all without exception are bound by an obligation of conscience to submit to the decisions of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, whether already issued or to be issued hereafter, exactly as to the decrees of the Sacred Congregations which are no matters of doctrine and approved by the Pope; nor can anyone who by word or writing attacks the said decrees avoid the note both of disobedience and rashness or be therefore without grave fault.Praestantia Scripturae, Pope St.Pius X [http://catholicfaithdefenders.com/genesis-myth-or-historical.html]
To be a Catholic it would seem that there is no choice but to agree without discussion or questioning.
That document and others like it are expressing what it means to be Catholic. It establishes a criteria against which we compare ourselves. If we accept and meet the criteria we are Catholic. We are free to be anything we choose, many choose to be Catholic some reject it.
Rather than sift through the dumpsters to see what out of context snippets can be found to support your assertions that Catholics are mind numb robots called to blindly obey Rome, look to the Catechism to see what the Church teaches about free will"
CCC1704 - The human person participates in the light and power of the divine Spirit. By his reason, he is capable of understanding the order of things established by the Creator. By free will, he is capable of directing himself toward his true good. He finds his perfection "in seeking and loving what is true and good."
CCC1711 - Endowed with a spiritual soul, with intellect and with free will, the human person is from his very conception ordered to God and destined for eternal beatitude. He pursues his perfection in "seeking and loving what is true and good"
CCC1730 - God created man a rational being, conferring on him the dignity of a person who can initiate and control his own actions. "God willed that man should be 'left in the hand of his own counsel,' so that he might of his own accord seek his Creator and freely attain his full and blessed perfection by cleaving to him." Man is rational and therefore like God; he is created with free will and is master over his acts.
CCC1731 - Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one's own responsibility. By free will one shapes one's own life. Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude.
CCC1853 - Sins can be distinguished according to their objects, as can every human act; or according to the virtues they oppose, by excess or defect; or according to the commandments they violate. They can also be classed according to whether they concern God, neighbor, or oneself; they can be divided into spiritual and carnal sins, or again as sins in thought, word, deed, or omission. The root of sin is in the heart of man, in his free will, according to the teaching of the Lord: "For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a man." But in the heart also resides charity, the source of the good and pure works, which sin wounds.
CCC1993 - Justification establishes cooperation between God's grace and man's freedom. On man's part it is expressed by the assent of faith to the Word of God, which invites him to conversion, and in the cooperation of charity with the prompting of the Holy Spirit who precedes and preserves his assent: When God touches man's heart through the illumination of the Holy Spirit, man himself is not inactive while receiving that inspiration, since he could reject it; and yet, without God's grace, he cannot by his own free will move himself toward justice in God's sight.
"The Christian faithful, conscious of their own responsibility, ARE BOUND BY CHRISTIAN OBEDIENCE to follow what the sacred pastors, as representatives of Christ, DECLARE as teachers of the faith or DETERMINE as leaders of the Church." - James A. Coriden, Thomas J. Green, Donald E. Heintschel, eds., The Code of Canon Law (Paulist Press, 1985), Canon 212, Section 1.
I am actually glad that you brought up Canon 212 because it, in its entirety, makes the Catholic cans and is counter to the point you are trying to make:
Canon 212
1. The Christian faithful, conscious of their own responsibility, are bound by Christian obedience to follow what the sacred pastors, as representatives of Christ, declare as teachers of the faith or determine as leaders of the Church.
2. The Christian faithful are free to make known their needs, especially spiritual ones, and their desires to the pastors of the Church.
3. In accord with the knowledge, competence and preeminence which they possess, they have the right and even at times a duty to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church, and they have a right to make their opinion known to the other Christian faithful, with due regard for the integrity of faith and morals and reverence toward their pastors, and with consideration of the common good and dignity of persons.
correction; Catholic cans should say Catholic “case” (damned autocorrect)
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