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.
Ever have that front porch collapse and kill five or six of your best dogs?
Thanks for your reply. I’ll try to stick to the subject.
Are you familiar the scripture concerning the great cloud of witnesses surrounding us?
I think it safe to say witnesses are aware of something concerning what they are witnessing. By definition I believe.
You seem to be asking for my opinion.
A corollary rule violation for you.
Sorry...
No front porch on this motor coach son.
You seem to be asking for my opinion.
A corollary rule violation for you.
Sorry
But it is comparable to Christ's relationship with the church.
So?
So much for Catholic reasoning.
You keep bringing up ever-fascinating examples of exactly why one should be Catholic and not try to act as their own Pope.
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.
You see? Another wonderful example.
Well, in light of the fact that Jesus Himself promises that if we ask according to God’s will that we know he hears and answers those prayers, what exactly is the point in praying to saints?
Are they going to give us something that God Himself won’t?
Then why waste time praying TO them for anything?
Jesus Himself called us His friends.
Do you have a problem with that?
Man made church? Seriously? You believe that the body of Christ is man made?
Anything that came out of the Reformation was man made, including the increasingly multiplicative and self-worshipping Protestant theologies.
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.
Were being saved, not are saved. Since you are within the constraints of time, you are not saved until the Judge declares you saved. The three parables in Matthew 25 are most instructive.
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.
Who's playing word games now? Your answer does not even address my question.
Jesus is not the guy you swap beers with on alternating nights in each other's garage. Jesus commands here. He is only your friend if you do what He commands. Any of your close and intimate friends command you? Any of your close and intimate friends tell you that unless you do as they command, they will no longer be your friend?
John 15: 12 This is my commandment, that you love one another, as I have loved you. 13 Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends. 14 You are my friends, if you do the things that I command you. 15 I will not now call you servants: for the servant knoweth not what his lord doth. But I have called you friends: because all things whatsoever I have heard of my Father, I have made known to you. 16 You have not chosen me: but I have chosen you; and have appointed you, that you should go, and should bring forth fruit; and your fruit should remain: that whatsoever you shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you. 17 These things I command you, that you love one another.
You may ask, but Jesus commands. Do you have that sort of friendship with other people?
The question is, are you?
Try reading the preceding chapter. The "cloud of witnesses," primarily Old Testament heroes, are set as examples for us, no? Examples of faith, of the race run....they are not to be prayed to! Nothing in the verses in Hebrews 11, or 12, nor in ANY book of the Bible teaches us or authorizes us to pray to ANYONE but God: Father, Son, Holy Spirit.
Not Mary, nor any Saint. Ever.
Hoss
And there are more being saved every day. When people hear about what Christ did and the Holy Spirit calls them they will be saved. There’s a lot of people being asked who they will vote for too.
>>Were being saved, not are saved.<<
Hebrews 10:10 By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. 11 And every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins: 12 But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God; 13 From henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool. 14 For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified. 1 Corinthians 6:11 11 And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.
Hebrews 10:14 For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.
Why don’t you and Natural Law get together and decide if you have a personal relationship with Christ in you and get back to us.
Yeah, metmom -- we wouldn't look nearly as spiffy in pointy hats, dresses, and red shoes.
:D
Hoss
CB -- that could lead to an infinite loop.
Hoss
LOL Kin I watch? ***runs to get pop corn***
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