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.
Isn’t it though...
The obelisk symbolized the sun god Ra and during the brief religious reformation of Akhenaten was said to be a petrified ray of the aten, the sundisk. It was also thought that the god existed within the structure. [http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Obelisk]
Associate with the obelisk and wheel in St Peters square with the sun burst around it and the sun burst around the MONSTRANCE which holds the “real presence” of the CC.
You have just proved once again that a search engine is not a substitute for an education. The Pontificale Romanum refers to the place where consecrated hosts are reserved for adoration or for later Eucharists as the tabernaculum (Tabernacle). An Ostensorium (Monstrance) is designated for holding and displaying any holy object which may include a host. Ostensoria are often stored within the tabernacle.
Please note that every Catholic Church has a relic, some small and some quite large. They are kept in appropriately sized ostensoria. Not all are "a cute thingy that the priest puts the wafer in with the sunburst around it to hold it up".
Thanks. I “favorited” it. ;o)
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/monstrance
: a vessel in which the consecrated Host is exposed for the adoration of the faithful
No one insulted Mary...What is being responded to is your treatment of Mary...
Even more evidence that a search engine is no substitute for a real education. That site claims the primary diety of Babylon was the sun god. Someone should tell the hillbillies who put that site together and the ones who give it credence that the primary god of Babylon and Summaria was the Father of gods "El".
I suppose it was a Catholic pagan plot that Abraham was Summarian and that one of the six Hebraic words for God is "El Shaddai", that the name of the nation founded by Abraham is IsraEl, and that the names of the archangels are MichaEL, GabriEl, RaphaEl, and AzraEl.
Better yet, why don't you invest in a real class in Art History where you might learn about the classical form do art and sculpture studied by the masters who were commissioned to create the art you claim the Catholic employed Sun God symbolism in.
TABERNACLE: A receptacle for the consecrated elements of the Eucharist (Mirriam-Webster).
Your "proof" states; A Monstrance is a receptical for holding holy objects for display. A consecrated host is a holy object. Therefore all holy objects are consecrated hosts. No thanks, I'll stick to the Pontificale Romanum for my definitions and to real legitimate logic.
Your "interesting site" also claims that Jesus is really the Archangel Michael and that Moses was really the Pharoh Tutmoses II for 22 of Tutmoses' 54 year reign. It sure appears your only "standard of evidence" is that it reflects negatively on the Church. If you were a Christian you should be embarrassed and ashamed for attempting such a smear. However, it looks like you are leaning towards the Jehova's Witnesses, so I am not holding my breath.
Feed the hungry, heal the sick, clothe the naked, visit those in prison...
You can't do that. That's adding works to the salvation that we know that we've pulled out of the cosmic Cracker Jack box.
Pray tell, what DID he mean?
Exactly what he says. Now, let us examine the process of how these words come to be upon your page or your screen.
God reveals. Paul receives. Paul writes (or others write). In Greek. Why? Paul is first and foremost an upper caste Jew. We don't know. Koine Greek is translated into Latin. The two versions are translated into the English KJV by a government committee who didn't know either.
Why do I say this? All this adds to the errors that Protestants intend upon discovering and exploiting in the pursuit of novel theologies.
That is why the Magisterium is so important. They bridge the gap upon translational errors and bridge the gap in time between cultural understanding now versus then. They even help to understand the differences between inferences that of an American culture versus the Jewish one.
We have all manner of idiots here who think that all inferences and meaning of 2011, all infrastructure, and all specific and scientific knowledge existed then just as we know it today. They think that a journey of 1000 miles consists of a jump in the car and three fillups at the gas stations on the way. They think that writings were sent around by email or available on a blog over the internet.
You don't think so? Look at your fellows' posts with a jaundiced eye for a few days and maybe you will see.
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?
I must apologize if I have lumped you in with the OSAS crowd. With all the esoteric beliefs and widely disparate theologies, it is sometimes difficult to keep track of who believes what. The preceding post led me to believe that you fell in that crowd on that point.
>>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.
I am speaking of the individual. Sanctification is a process, not a point. It occurs over a period of time - the length of time that that person engages in being sanctified (what?). The time may be short (deathbed conversion e.g.) or a whole lifetime (the workers in the vineyard e.g.).
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”.
The argument that I have is with the Buddy Christ idea that somehow Jesus is a dude that we swap beers in our garages. If you wish to hop into the conversation, that is fine, but please understand the context. Jesus is Lord God Almighty, not Joe from next door who barbeques chicken and burgers every weekend and is half in the bag by the time they're done.
That’s exactly what Catholics do by claiming there need to be works added.
You may wish to review the Commandments of Christ before you repeat that statement again. All of the Commandments, not just the Two.
Why are you hung up on the Roman Catholic Church? I belong to the Latin branch of the Catholic Church, which is a cultural thing, not a theological one.
Still.. YOPIOS? After all, you indicated "I" --
A messenger is no longer an individual?
That is part of the reason why we have our differences. You guys read things a little different than the Church Fathers and Apostles did.
And fitting, given the apparent character and belief of those holding those beliefs, would you not say.
If you know what Catholic doctrine is, why do you get it so boneachingly wrong all the time? You claim to be wise in the ways of Catholicism?
Romans 1: 22While claiming to be wise,t they became fools 23and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for the likeness of an image of mortal man or of birds or of four-legged animals or of snakes.u
Or
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