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.
Bull. There have been more acts of depravity and heresy committed based on “interpretation” of the Book of Revelation than any other book in the Holy Bible.
1. Jim Jones
2. David Koresh
Not to mention Jehovahs Witnesses, and other sects that have predicted the world ending numerous times.
And as for interpretation, I will look to the Original Church for guidance.
Where DID you cut-n-paste that from then?
As a matter of fact. Now that I have read some on that site I think more should go check it out. I’ll actually put a clickable link to it.
http://aletheia.consultronix.com/7.html
If I had taken that from any site I would have put the site address in. I want any lurkers to go check out all the ties to pagan worship. If I had taken that from a site I would have wanted anyone who is interested to go get the other information contained on those sites. The more people learn the better informed they become. It would be stupid for me to keep the extra information those sites contain from them.
I wouldn't call perusing the internet and performing an occasional cut and paste actual study. I would call it plagiarism.
I have studied this stuff for a lot of years now.
You honestly think that information wasn’t available before the internet? Katherin had more books on the subject of pagan religions then you have on Catholicism I would bet. She laughed at Christians who didn’t know how much paganism they practiced.
Blessed! That’s a whole lot different then being warned to stay away from it isn’t it.
You honestly want me to believe that you didn't cut and paste that? (Catholics can Google too).
Oh, I get it. That website plagiarized you.
Catholics are being made fun of in pagan societies and among those who know pagan religions. The Mariology of the CC is taken directly from pagan practices of the societies they were trying to convert. They simply replaced the pagan gods with what they hoped would be Christian gods.
BTW That cute thingy that the priest puts the wafer in with the sunburst around it to hold it up? That came from pagan practices also.
Its called a tabernacle. (See, you didn't need to plagiarize, you have enough goofy ideas of your own.)
I thought it was called the Monstrance. They all have the sun burst right? In fact, doesn’t St Peters square also have the sun burst design with the obelisk in the center surrounded with a four point wheel? If you can find a book or something on the temple of Baal in Hatzor check out the pattern on the alter. Or just look up the symbol of Baal.
See I think anyone that converts to Catholicism was never saved... and was a social or a cultural 'protestant" looking for an experience that makes them feel holy ... and all that drama and incense and vestments sure make even a heathen feel holy .
No, you thought it was called a "thingy". A Monstrance (Ostensorium) does not hold consecrated hosts. You really ought to do a little actual research on Catholicism and the Catholic Church on which to base your criticisms. Right now you just look like an ignorant doofus.
Riiiiiiggggghhhhhttt.
Ostensorium means, in accordance with its etymology, a vessel designed for the more convenient exhibition of some object of piety. Both the name ostensorium and the kindred word monstrance (monstrancia, from monstrare) were originally applied to all kinds of vessels of goldsmith's or silversmith's work in which glass, crystal, etc. were so employed as to allow the contents to be readily distinguished, whether the object thus honoured were the Sacred Host itself or only the relic of some saint. [http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11344a.htm]
>>You really ought to do a little actual research on Catholicism and the Catholic Church on which to base your criticisms.<<
Maybe you should. I already had.
Interesting when we know more about CC stuff then they do.
You guys need to check out the pic of the St Peters square area. Look at the picture from above with the obelisk in the center of a four spoked wheel then compare that to the four spoked wheel symbol of Baal.
The key to understanding Revelation is in understanding the Old Testament .
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