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.
Plus it wouldn't do any good. That's why I didn't bother.
I have made meaningful theological contact with some folks on here that were much more hostile to Catholics than CB.
You must have missed all the passages that tell of Jesus sitting to eat with many different people. Even the Pharisees. I believe it was metmom who posted those verses already.
And I have previously posted that a king may eat with his subjects, but they are still his subjects. Jesus tells us that He is our friend only if we do what He commands. Do you have any personal and intimate friends who impose that upon you as a condition for friendship? Jesus imposes that upon us as a condition of His friendship.
"In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel." (the gospel committed to Paul). ROm. 2:16. It is the gospel of the grace of God that saves. Without it, you are dead in your sins. There remains no other sacrifice for your sins if you have rejected the finished work of Christ on your behalf. God will judge men by that very gospel.
This is a very good example of how people can fail to understand Paul. Some might think that Paul originated the Gospel, or else has one separate from Jesus by these words.
John 15:15 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.
I posted that yesterday, but I posted the entire passage. You might want to show that you are not simply prooftexting once again and reread the entire passage in order to understand what He truly means here.
He is telling us that He will only be friends with us (benevolent king) if we (His subjects) do as He commands. Do your friends tell you that they will only be your friend if you do as they command?
“Jesus tells us that He is our friend only if we do what He commands.”
Feed the hungry, heal the sick, clothe the naked, visit those in prison...
Wasn't he a speech writer for Martin Luther?
Old Hank Tudor just didn't have the imagination that Joseph Smith did. He did not care about what was done in church, just that he got to do some looting and get that troublesome Pope off his back.
Pray tell, what DID he mean?
Actually it not Christianity that is about done. It is the ruins of the Reformation that are about done. Witness the Episcopal church and the Presbyterian church and the Pentecostals and...
When will they pass from allowing homosexual actions and marriage in your bunch to making it mandatory?
“For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries. Anyone who has rejected Moses’ law dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses.
Of how much worse punishment, do you suppose, will he be thought worthy who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing, and insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know Him who said, “Vengeance is Mine; I will repay, says the Lord.” And again, “The Lord will judge His people.” It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” (Hebrews 10:26-31)
You have never once heard me say that belief (that is current belief) is not needed for salvation. Why would you assume that if one no longer believes that they still have salvation?
>>You may wish to use another translation. Verse 14 tells of those who are being sanctified, not those that are.<<
Once again, if people are being added to your church does that mean if they stop being added they are no longer added? Or does it take a lifetime to be added to your church? Even if it did say “being santified” it doesn’t matter because it’s multiple people who are being sanctified. The same as multiple people being added to the church. Not one person being added over a long period of time. You cannot take that one verse and force a totally separate meaning from all the other verses.
Do I expect my friends to not turn away from me? Sure. Besides, it’s you trivializing what Protestants say. A personal relationship does not indicate demeaning or disrespecting the person you have that relationship with. Do you treat your wife with respect or disdain? Trying to imply that by saying we have a personal relationship we somehow demean that relationship may well reflect on your view of the term “personal relationship”.
That crap is so juvenile. If you tie that to all Protestants should we also tie the pedophiles to you?
That’s exactly what Catholics do by claiming there need to be works added.
I have seen Protestants pronounce that once they proclaim their own salvation then all sins, even unrepented sins, from that point forward are washed away.
"If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God." - Heb 10:26-27
Oh.. you mean the teachings of the Apostles.... not the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church which did not exist at that time. Gotcha.
Still.. YOPIOS? After all, you indicated "I" --
Hoss
“might” and “should” are the keywords? Mark...SHIRLEY you don’t mean that...because if I thought you were SERIES...
Of course not, but sin is not an unintentional act or oversight. All sin is a deliberate choice to reject good and no one is ignorant of the principles of the natural law, which are written in the conscience of every man.
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