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.
I ain’t sayin nothin.
I ain’t sayin nothin. :-)
ROFL!!
Ecclesiastes 9:5 For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten. 6 Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun.
Leviticus 19:31 Regard not them that have familiar spirits, neither seek after wizards, to be defiled by them: I am the LORD your God.
Isaiah 8:19 And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep, and that mutter: should not a people seek unto their God? for the living to the dead?
Christ died and was the perfect sacrifice for our sins. The veil was torn as a sign that the partition between us and God the Father was no longer there. He became the High Priest for all time. That means we have the ability now to go directly into the presence of the Father through Jesus. Jesus gave instructions on prayer.
Matthew 6:9 After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. 10 Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. 11 Give us this day our daily bread. 12 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. 13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.
As you can see Jesus instructions direct us to pray directly to the Father. Christ suffered and died to give us that benefit. There is no greater access that anyone has then those of us who believe in Him. To pray to anyone else hoping to somehow increase our access or importance is a denigration of respect for what Jesus did for us to have that right to direct access to the Father. It’s a denial of what Jesus told us our right is.
What on earth For?
What are they going to do for us that the Father Himself won't do?
Matthew 7:7-11 "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. 9Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? 10Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? 11If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
Luke 11:1-13 1Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples." 2And he said to them, "When you pray, say:
"Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. 3 Give us each day our daily bread, 4and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation."
5And he said to them, "Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, 'Friend, lend me three loaves, 6for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him'; 7and he will answer from within, 'Do not bother me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything'?
8I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his impudence he will rise and give him whatever he needs. 9And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 10For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. 11What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; 12or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? 13If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!"
John 14:13-15 13 Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.
John 15:15-17 15 No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. 16You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. 17These things I command you, so that you will love one another.
John 16:22-28 22 So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you. 23 In that day you will ask nothing of me. Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. 24Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.
25"I have said these things to you in figures of speech. The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures of speech but will tell you plainly about the Father. 26In that day you will ask in my name, and I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf; 27 for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God. 28 I came from the Father and have come into the world, and now I am leaving the world and going to the Father."
Now would you like to show me where that is considered not true?
Is there still confusion or disbelief about intercessory prayer? And still conflating this issue with the Communion of Saints? I thought that had been cleared up many posts ago, and here we are again? Sheesh.
Is there still confusion about how Jesus Himself taught us to pray when His disciples asked Him?
Does none of the teaching or instruction from Jesus Himself about prayer that is posted in post 525 mean anything?
Those are Jesus’ own words. Whatever happened to *Do whatever He tells you*? (John 2:5)
I believe it was Irenaeus, in Against Heresies, who put it something like: Christ became like us that we may become like Him. And he, like Paul I believe, used the parallel of Jesus/Adam, and that we are made in His image. Cf: Peter and “partakers of the divine nature..”
Basic Christian theology.
The Nicene Creed makes clear our fundamental belief in One God. I think those that pervert the Christian faith either in ignorance or to justify their own modernist views should be ignored or at most sympathized with for attempting scurrilous attacks on this point.
Is the Lord’s prayer the only teaching of Our Saviour on prayer? Is it the only prayer He said?
Are you unfamiliar with St. Paul and his words on intercessions?
Does your comment have anything to do with intercessory prayer or the topic?
I don’t think so.
Perhaps the actual point in discussion can continue, likely to go round again.
Speaking of which; Wasn’t it you who said something like; “Granted, the saints in heaven may be praying for us?”
Giving an answer that does not satisfy the question is not an answer.
The threads you list do not substantiate your fatuous claim that the absence of references to the the bodily Assumption of Mary in scripture is evidence FOR such an occurrence, merely that said absence does not conflict with scripture...what I have been maintaining, and you have been denying, all along.
Your inability to accept that logical distinction does not change the fact that it makes perfect sense, and your characterization of it is false.
You are unfamiliar with the phrase "distinction without difference?" It's like saying there's a difference between the value of a "dollar" and a "buck." The difference is strictly a matter of nomenclature and has no real meaning.
When preceded by the term "practical," it means "in application."
In other words, it's an empty distinction. Think of it like this: if you claim your Bible interpretations are lead by the Holy Spirit, then denying your interpretations are infallible, all you've done is say you can't rely on the leading of the Holy Spirit when interpreting the Bible.
So why bring him into it in the first place? To claim for your interpretation credibility that you don't actually possess.
But perhaps I've made a mistake. Please outline for me the way Sola and Solo are different in application to determining faith and practice.
On what basis do you attack the legitimacy of claiming "silence" is not "denial?"
Like trinitarian theology?
The verses you cite no more define the doctrine of the Trinity than a check outlines your financial status.
Whoops, sorry...wrong poster.
What happened? Did this place turn into the bar scene from Star Wars after I left?
Evidently Paul didn’t get the message since he expressed to Timothy his desires the prayers and supplications be made and thanks be given for all men.
I have met not a few in psych wards who felt called to spread the Gospel -- usually tome and usually at great length. I don't think feeling alone is the qualifier. And I don't see anything in Scripture that says it is.
Interesting phraseology. We Christians do not liken Christianity to sausage making. Please elaborate on the theological implications of sausage making and your particular beliefs, if you would. This would not be linked to any neo Nazi style cults, would it?
Yes there is worlds of difference. I’m sorry to hear that you admit you don’t have Jesus. We do and we worship Him as well.
Romans 8:10 And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.
The term "have" in English denotes possession. It also denotes the relative importance of the two subjects/objects in the sentence. To say that you "have God" can be construed as saying that you own or hold in an subordinate role, the entity of God.
That is the arrogance of Protestant thought - that they own or somehow control God for their own benefit. That is not a Catholic thought and never has been.
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