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.
But it is comparable to Christ's relationship with the church.
And by convoluted RCC reasoning which allows them to claim that since Mary is the mother of Christ and Christ = God, then Mary is the mother of God, we can then state that since a man's relationship with his wife is comparable with Christ's relationship with the Church, and since Christ = God, then a man's relationship with his wife is comparable to the church's relationship to God.
So much for Catholic reasoning.
John 15:12-16 12 "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. 14You are my friends if you do what I command you. 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.
Object, deny, or refute that fact of having Christ in us all you want but take heed.
Romans 8:9 But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.
Man made church? Seriously? You believe that the body of Christ is man made?
Acts 2:47 praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved.
Those who are saved are part of the church which is the body of Christ.
Your choice of terminology is fascinating.
INteresting that you would introduce "Nazi" into your post. that you would introduce "Nazi" into your post. Is there a Link (pardon the pun)? I don't know, you tell me.
Your terminology brought up images of the Brownshirts.
Concordats with you-know-who by the Vatican,
Do you know what a concordat is and what entities enter into them?
you-know-who is a Nazi who is a Catholic,
Pray enlighten me.
2000 year old sausage doctrines and traditions who have deceived both "the great" and "the small".
Not aware of any.
The Bible would shut the sausage factory down real fast.
Misinterpretation of the Bible was what opened the sausage factory of the Reformation.
How do you know this about Mary?
Where does Scripture give the names of Mary’s parents or say that Mary is a descendent of the house of David?
It seems that because there are slight differences in the lists, an assumption has been made that it must be that the reason is that one is that of Joseph and one is that of Mary.
But, Scripture never says this does it?
There are a myriad of theories as to the reason for the differences, but any theory must be extra Biblical speculation because the Bible itself gives no reason for the disparities.
The two separate accounts of Jesus lineage back to David cannot both be true of Joseph.
So, is the Holy Spirit God? or a representative of God?
Now wait a minute....
If one can presume the assumption of Mary based on the argument that Scripture doesn’t actually specifically deny it, along with a host of other stories about Mary, then since Scripture doesn’t deny that that genealogy is Mary’s, then we can claim that it is hers based on opinion pieces by *church fathers*, theologians, or other Bible scholars.
It’s now up to the Catholics to prove that it’s not her genealogy since we claim it is.
Yes
You say that we should follow Jesus in our prayer and cite the Lord's Prayer and gratuitously ask what happened to "Do whatever he tells you."
So, I see NOTHING in the Lord's prayer about making prayers and supplications or giving thanks for all men. (This argument has nothing to do with the intercession of the saints. It has to do with how closely bound we are to the Lord's Prayer.) It would SEEM that Paul is asking for something NOT in the Lord's prayer.
Therefore it seems that Paul disagrees with you about the manner in which the Lord's Prayer serves as a model. The Lord's Prayer has no explicitly intercessory parts, yet Paul wants people to make intercessory prayers.
So I say "Evidently Paul didn’t get the message...".
The question of "FOR" or "TO" is utterly irrelevant to the point being made. It is shucking and jiving, laying down smoke, changing the subject, ANYTHING but responding to the argument.
If the best your side can do is change the subject, then how strong are your arguments? Really.
This exemplifies the embarrassing tendency to change the subject in order, as it seems, to score cheap points.
I am not arguing (here) that the saints in heaven can pray for others. YOUR SIDE asserts that they can't. Yet I get only vague answers (read all the Epistles of Paul)when I ask for the authority.
Then it is said, mockingly and quite without regard for the facts, that I am saying that it is permitted since there is no prohibition.
Is the other side's argument that it is prohibited since there is no permission?
Evidently it HAS become the bar scene in Star Wars. I'm outta here. Call me if you ever should want to have a discussion.
[face palm]
The Father is God.
The Son is God.
The Holy Ghost is God.
That Father is NOT the Son or the Holy Ghost.
The Son is NOT the Father or the Holy Ghost.
The Holy Ghost is NOT the Father or the Son.
Yes I believe in the Trinity. One who says the Son is the Paraclete he sends does not or does so wrongly.
They will do the same thing that Paul exhorts, make prayers and supplications and give thanks for all men.
Seems to me that you guys don't put all that much stock in the scriptures...It's like you use the scriptures as an outline for your tradition...
Jesus left us some pretty good hints on the subject...
Luk 16:26 And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence.
The rich man could not communicate with Lazarus...And likewise, Lazarus could not communicate with the rich man...But apparently, they could see each other since the proximity of Hell and Abraham's Bosom were close enough to see each other...
Luk 16:27 Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father's house:
Obviously the dead Lazarus wasn't in the business of traveling to and from Abraham's bosom, or anywhere...
Luk 16:28 For I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment.
Lazarus was not able to communicate with the folks back home...The rich man knew that to communicate, Lazarus would have had to make the trip...And the indication is that the people back home couldn't communicate with the rich man or Lazarus...
Luk 16:30 And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent.
Obviously not true...One did show up from the dead and most still do not believe Him...But look at the response...
Luk 16:29 Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.
Now we know that the rich man's family didn't have Moses and the prophets...They were long dead...
But what the family did have was the words of Moses and the prophets in the scriptures...That's what Abraham said...They wouldn't believe the scriptures, the words of the Holy God...
Abraham told the rich man that there will be no communication from those in Hell or Abraham's Bosom with the friends and family back home...
That leaves us with Jesus and Jesus alone...
Not every word ever written by a Catholic is infallible or binding upon the faithful.
That this is thrown out there as some sort of “gotcha” proves again the total misunderstanding of the the structure and magisterium of the Church.
Well, I don't know...Have denotes own and we surly can't own the Spirit of Christ.../Sarcasm...
Who did Jesus address the prayer to?
And who did Jesus promise would hear and answer our prayers in those verses I posted?
The topic was praying to saints vs praying to God only, not the exact content of the prayer.
I didn’t change the subject.
*sigh*
The point is not whether the saints in heaven are aware of what is going on here on earth or whether they do or are capable of praying for us, but whether we are to pray TO them for anything.
There is no precedent to support the practice and there is no Scriptural support or teaching to encourage it. Ont eh contrary, contact with those whose physical bodies have died a physical death here on earth and have left this stage of their existence it prohibited in Scripture and always has been.
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