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.
Ye also helping together by prayer for us, that for the gift bestowed upon us by the means of many persons thanks may be given by many on our behalf.Now I pray to God that ye do no evil; not that we should appear approved, but that ye should do that which is honest, though we be as reprobates.
Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints; and for me, that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the gospel for which I am an ambassador in bonds: that therein I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak.
We give thanks to God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you…
For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding.
Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving; Withal praying also for us, that God would open unto us a door of utterance, to speak the mystery of Christ, for which I am also in bonds: That I may make it manifest, as I ought to speak.
Brethren, pray for us.
Wherefore also we pray always for you, that our God would count you worthy of this calling, and fulfil all the good pleasure of his goodness, and the work of faith with power:
Finally, brethren, pray for us, that the word of the Lord may have free course, and be glorified, even as it is with you…
I think, based on my limited, though extensive participation on these recent threads that:
What is perceived as a denigration of the “personal relationship” part is, at least in my posts, not a diminishing of the importance of relationship with God, but the diminished relationship with Church, with others.
Some time ago, I think I phrased it as: “Just me and Jesus and Scripture, that’s all I need.”
Here’s the tie: Diminishing intercessory prayer diminishes our relationship with others in the Church. We don’t need them. “It doesn’t get any better than this.” etc.
However, IMHO, this is so contrary to Christ’s teaching as well as St. Paul’s. God desires and is pleased with our intercessions for each other, with our prayers for each other, with our sharing of both burdens and joys.
Being Christian means much more than a personal relationship with God; so much so that we cannot have a proper relationship with God without a proper relationship with His Church, the Body of Christ.
And this means, among many other things, praying for each other.
Mark,
I should have pinged you to the previous as it is a direct take–off of your discussion.
FWIW anyway.
Well, I'm sure it wouldn't be quite as much fun; I don't wear stripey socks. My feet might roll up, but no guarantee.
Just please tell me you're not wishing violence upon me...wouldn't that be a "mortal" sin??
Hoss
CB - Those who are saved are part of the church.
No, but we pray FOR the living, not TO the dead or FOR the dead.
Where does Paul instruct us to pray to or for the dead?
He wrote that to and for real, live living people, not dead people.
I don't know that they had beer back then...But you can bet Jesus tipped a number of wine highballs on a regular basis...
And I'm sure he got pretty good at Texas Hold 'em...Bible doesn't say he didn't...
Of course, Jesus again slaps you up side the head with scripture...
Joh 5:24 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.
Of course I'm not. That was just the first mental image that came to mind when I read your post. And please don't call me a Munchkin.
Do you? Why?
Your posts indicate you don't believe in intercessions or at least their efficacy. You post such as: "Both Jesus and the Holy Spirit are making intercession for us believers before God Himself. It doesn't get any better than that." Previous posts of yours posit the same point about our intercessions.
Does this post, the post I replied to not concern the living as well? If so, why then do you pray for the living?
Fair enough. Scarecrow, maybe, but no Munchkin. ;)
Hoss
1 John 5:11-15 11And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12 Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.
13I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life. 14And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. 15And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.
2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
Does poor reading comprehension come with being a Catholic?
Sheesh. Do try to focus and re-read what I posted.
I’ve read it several times and have the same questions.
How ‘bout indulging me and answering them?
Funny that those whose church is big on charitable works don’t seem to be big on doing it themselves at their own expense on their own property.
It’s got to be *helping* at church sponsored and paid for facilities.
You know what? I don’t have a problem hanging out at a bar having chicken wings and pizza when I can get a chance to share Christ with someone. Some church people flip over that.
Oh well, those people I shared Christ with there came to Christ.
OK. Again,....
Nowhere in Scripture are we instructed or encouraged to pray to anyone but God himself.
Any attempts at contact with dead people is prohibited by God Himself.
Time spend praying to dead people who nobody is even sure is in heaven, is time NOT spent praying to God.
Jesus commands us to pray and gives us an outline for praying and it is to GOD alone, nobody else.
Thanks for your reply but those weren’t the questions. This discussion is like ping–pong.
There are two issues involved: intercessory prayer by the living and does it apply to the Saints in Heaven (Communion of Saints). If you take the first off the table, the second is moot.
Whenever I focus on one, you jump to the other.
Ping–pong like.
Your post and my replies concerned intercessions/intercessory prayer. Your posts indicate you do not believe in it in some fashion. Either it’s not efficacious, not necessary, or we shouldn’t do it, praying only the Lord’s Prayer.
So, I’m trying to stick to this point to clarify whether the second is moot.
Back to the questions I asked about your post “we pray to the living.” Remember we’re trying to look only at the intercession part, for the living.
I asked: Do you pray for the living? Why?
I asked this because:
Your posts indicate you don’t believe in intercessions or at least their efficacy. You post such as: “Both Jesus and the Holy Spirit are making intercession for us believers before God Himself. It doesn’t get any better than that.” Previous posts of yours posit the same point about our intercessions.
And i asked referring your post 738 (quoting St. Paul in Romans and Hebrews): Does this post, the post I replied to not concern the living as well? If so, why then do you pray for the living?
I can make it much simpler by asking along these lines: Do you believe our intercessions for (living) Saints are effective? Do they matter; help each other? Or are they useless, insignificant, of a tiny value, etc? Or should we *not* make intercessory prayers at all since we are only to use the Lord’s Prayer?
thank you...
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