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.
Hate it when that happens.
Aren't the first two statements contradictions?
Now, we superimposed feast days over existing pagan holidays because we wanted the people to follow Christianity and not the pagan feast days, and because they were already prepared to celebrate a feast day and would adjust to the new Faith more easily.
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.
So does praying and kneeling and worshipping. So does breaking bread together. Shall we forgo those as well?
The key to understanding God's revelation to man is the Gospels. Without them, man flounders and errs and comes up with rather odd things like the Reformation.
That would be the "real presence" of God. Unlike Protestants, we do not confuse the Creator and the created.
I accepted Christ on Dec 23, 1971. Wrong again.
That crap is so juvenile. If you tie that to all Protestants should we also tie the pedophiles to you?
Shall we look at percentages? What percent of Protestants are in completely apostate churches? Upwards of 98 percent of Presbyterians are in churches that even the abominal John Calvin would be horrified at. When will homosexual activity and marriage, now openly accepted in Presbyterianism, become mandatory?
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
That is why Santa Claus is Protestant.
Since Catholics do not worship Mary, what is the point of your post?
I treat her the way our Lord would wish. With reverence and love.
I converted to Eastern Orthodoxy. It is different in many ways to RC, but many core beliefs are the same.
Are you now denying even the Ecumenical Councils?
Nestorius was anathema.
Are you now denying even the Ecumenical Councils?
Nestorius was anathema.
The names of many months of the year also have pagan roots. Guess its time to change their names. While we’re at it, might as well change the names of the days of the week too; yep pagan in origin.
Heck, we should outlaw, on a global scale mind you, the use of French, Spanish, and Italian, since, after all, we all know they have pagan roots (that evil Latin language, doncha know).
How’s that for cynicism?
OR, and I realize this is a radical concept for some, that which is good, can be kept and used for good, despite its “roots”, since even pagans agree 1+1=2.
Or maybe we should start doubting that too, since it’s “pagan”.
Really.....really?
So... Is your church's "holy father" in Rome?
Yes?
Thus Roman Catholic Church.
You can do better than that. As for "hung up" -- only on truth. Something the Roman Catholic Church needs a HUGE dose of.
Hoss
If you think that’s what relationship consists of I don’t guess I can change that. If that’s the type of relationship that you have with your priest I don’t suppose you have a base to understand what a relationship with Christ may be like.
If the only view of a relationship is beer and barbeque then I’m not going to be able to relate on that subject.
Rom. 11:6, "But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace is no longer grace."
Thus began the queen of heaven thing in 431 in Ephesus. God commanded to destroy the trappings of pagan worship, not adapt them.
And the bodily assumption of Mary.
I note one particular passage of this apostasy:
"but by her manifold intercession continues to bring us the gifts of eternal salvation .... "
Mary's intercession?? She is "invoked...as Mediatrix"???
We have one mediator--Christ. We have one intercessor for our sins--Christ. This passage teaches a wickedness that goes beyond belief.
In order for this filth to be true, Mary would have to be elevated to a co-equal status with Christ (and apparently is as she is invoked as Mediatrix)--which defies God!! It debases Christ!!
Mary has no part in "bringing eternal salvation"--this is a gift of God!!! Check Ephesians 2:8-9.
And, if anyone is praying to her, they are worshipping her regardless of any marble-mouthed explanation to the contrary. The Roman Catholic Church worships Mary.
Hoss
I was horrified with John Calvin. Burning Michael Servetus at the stake gives a glimps into his theology. I couldn’t care less what John Calvin believed. When did you confuse me with anyone defending any religion other than that which holds strictly to accepting Jesus as savior with no pagan trappings or views that contradict scripture?
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