Posted on 05/03/2008 4:38:34 PM PDT by NYer
Scripture, our Evangelical friends tell us, is the inerrant Word of God. Quite right, the Catholic replies; but how do you know this to be true?
It's not an easy question for Protestants, because, having jettisoned Tradition and the Church, they have no objective authority for the claims they make for Scripture. There is no list of canonical books anywhere in the Bible, nor does any book (with the exception of St. John's Apocalypse) claim to be inspired. So, how does a "Bible Christian" know the Bible is the Word of God?
If he wants to avoid a train of thought that will lead him into the Catholic Church, he has just one way of responding: With circular arguments pointing to himself (or Luther or the Jimmy Swaggart Ministries or some other party not mentioned in the Bible) as an infallible authority telling him that it is so. Such arguments would have perplexed a first or second century Christian, most of whom never saw a Bible.
Christ founded a teaching Church. So far as we know, he himself never wrote a word (except on sand). Nor did he commission the Apostles to write anything. In due course, some Apostles (and non-Apostles) composed the twenty-seven books which comprise the New Testament. Most of these documents are ad hoc; they are addressed to specific problems that arose in the early Church, and none claim to present the whole of Christian revelation. It's doubtful that St. Paul even suspected that his short letter to Philemon begging pardon for a renegade slave would some day be read as Holy Scripture.
Who, then, decided that it was Scripture? The Catholic Church. And it took several centuries to do so. It was not until the Council of Carthage (397) and a subsequent decree by Pope Innocent I that Christendom had a fixed New Testament canon. Prior to that date, scores of spurious gospels and "apostolic" writings were floating around the Mediterranean basin: the Gospel of Thomas, the "Shepherd" of Hermas, St. Paul's Letter to the Laodiceans, and so forth. Moreover, some texts later judged to be inspired, such as the Letter to the Hebrews, were controverted. It was the Magisterium, guided by the Holy Spirit, which separated the wheat from the chaff.
But, according to Protestants, the Catholic Church was corrupt and idolatrous by the fourth century and so had lost whatever authority it originally had. On what basis, then, do they accept the canon of the New Testament? Luther and Calvin were both fuzzy on the subject. Luther dropped seven books from the Old Testament, the so-called Apocrypha in the Protestant Bible; his pretext for doing so was that orthodox Jews had done it at the synod of Jamnia around 100 A. D.; but that synod was explicitly anti-Christian, and so its decisions about Scripture make an odd benchmark for Christians.
Luther's real motive was to get rid of Second Maccabees, which teaches the doctrine of Purgatory. He also wanted to drop the Letter of James, which he called "an epistle of straw," because it flatly contradicts the idea of salvation by "faith alone" apart from good works. He was restrained by more cautious Reformers. Instead, he mistranslated numerous New Testament passages, most notoriously Romans 3:28, to buttress his polemical position.
The Protestant teaching that the Bible is the sole spiritual authority--sola scriptura --is nowhere to be found in the Bible. St. Paul wrote to Timothy that Scripture is "useful" (which is an understatemtn), but neither he nor anyone else in the early Church taught sola scriptura. And, in fact, nobody believed it until the Reformation. Newman called the idea that God would let fifteen hundred years pass before revealing that the bible was the sole teaching authority for Christians an "intolerable paradox."
Newman also wrote: "It is antecedently unreasonable to Bsuppose that a book so complex, so unsystematic, in parts so obscure, the outcome of so many minds, times, and places, should be given us from above without the safeguard of some authority; as if it could possibly, from the nature of the case, interpret itself...." And, indeed, once they had set aside the teaching authority of the Church, the Reformers began to argue about key Scriptural passages. Luther and Zwingli, for example, disagreed vehemently about what Christ meant by the words, "This is my Body."
St. Augustine, usually Luther's guide and mentor, ought to have the last word about sola scriptura: "But for the authority of the Church, I would not believe the Gospel."
The Roman Catholic Edifice
HAS REMOVED ITSELF from the walk of authentic faith quite repeatedly and quite outrageously over the centuries from relatively early on.
But then that's the nature of bureaucracies and especially so of RELIGIOUS bureaucracies . . . doing their own thing . . . God can take a hike . . . they have RUBBER HISTORY WRITING and CONTOLLING OVER THE SERFS to do.
But, according to Protestants, the Catholic Church was corrupt and idolatrous by the fourth century and so had lost whatever authority it originally had.
Gotta love those Catholic make-it-up-as-we-go-along apologetics!
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Works for me . . . they were corrupt shortly after creating themselves in the 4th century. I can believe that quite easily.
The Mass is not a re-sacrifice, in the sense that Catholics do not re-crucify Christ. The Mass is a re-presentation of Christ’s one, all sufficient sacrifice, which is shared with all (and done in the way He instructed at the Last Supper).
At least that is what I have come to understand.
It IS the older organization, after all. Much closer to where the Gospels were actually written, etc.
I love you guys, but the Reformation happened, because the Catholic Church was a mess. That, and the fact that God wanted it to. Deal with it.
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INDEED.
But they are in a catch-22. They CANNOT deal with it.
If they deal with it . . . they'd be left alllllll
ALONE
WITH GOD.
And that's as scary for them as it was for the Israelites who refused to meet individually with God at the Tent of Metting and insisted that Moses talk to God for them.
The whole idea of standing naked before God without even Mary's hanky to cover themselves with just sends them into fits of appoplexy and endless loop genuflecting.
They're like a fish flopping around in the Sahara without their 'holy' water.
They'd have to run and hide behind their robes and pomp and circumstance.
Just think . . . Strip away the rituals.
Strip away the layers of "saints" and pontificators.
Strip away the multitude of layers of Mary's hankies . . .
Strip away the layers of magicsterical power-mongering . . .
Just a collection of Christians meeting in a home a la I Cor 12-14 . . . GOODNESS! That's TOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Biblical.
No fossilized edifice to hide behind?
The whole thing comes crashing down around their garters.
The terror of facing God ALONE with "just" the Blood of Jesus must be really starkly horrific, to them.
WHAT AN INSULT to the PRICELESS BLOOD OF JESUS!
GOD AND GOD ALONE!
BUT NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! They gotta have the magicsterical tell them how to think and act in all things RELIGIOUS. RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD is for the professionals.
IF they started facing the truth of History, the truth of Scripture the truth of linguistic accuracies . . . the whole house of cards would crash in a whoop.
Besides, if they got personally close to God, He'd peek in all those nooks and cranies and tell them how to live. CAN'T HAVE !!!THAT!!!
Better to keep all the hoopla between the RC individual and God. That way, in classic fashion in complex systems, there's always an out. One can always argue some facet of some magicsterical pontification to rationalize anything.
Just look at the rationalizations for the Pontificator of Rome being the head of all the clubs from the South Pole to Siberia. Add in the fantasies about Magnificent Magical Earth-Mother Mary . . . So many things to attend to and hide behind. Affords all manner of RELIGIOUS games instead of a 1:1 RELATIONSHIP with God that Christ died for.
Besides, jumping through all the magicsterical's hoops provides SUCH a self-congratulating sense of earning one's way RELIGIOUSLY. Who needs the Blood of Jesus THEN!
CAIN INDEED!
Praise the Pope and pass the rosaries!
[gag]
And to our polytheistic Church of Rome friend; the Bible makes it’s own claim to inerrency many many times, and I didn’t need some pope or a handy collection of saints, (a saint for every ailment), to hand hold me or tell me what to believe. Your dogma is so transparent.
And your doctrine of Maryology and praying to this host of saints is implicitly breaking the first two commandments, which makes the teaching of your popes antithetical to Christ’s.
Therefore by definition they are false prophets and are apostate, no matter how well intentioned they are or how much charisma they have personally.
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YUP.
1. Connecting that with a long string of farces from/in Rome is a HUGE stretch, for one.
2. As I’ve said before . . . even PRETENDING that Rome started out kosher—A HUGE STRETCH, SUCH PRETENDING—the train quickly left the tracks over a huge chasm. Any shred of anointing departed and the huge shell of a huge structure remains with all it’s self-aggrandizing accoutraments.
3. The notion that Christ commissioned Pebble Peter to be a foundational Rock of a new bureaucratic edifice to rival the Jewish one of 2,000 years ago is beyond far fetched. It’s outrageously and embarrassingly ludicrous.
Goodness!
I’m beginning to think that the RC edifice dispenses KOOLAID and wafers instead of wine and wafers.
Personally, I think evangelicals of the Arminian/Weslyan tradition (in which Tradition is respected, though not equal to Scripture) are mostly right, though they generally don’t know why they are right. That makes them inept at defending their positions. How Republican of them.
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Tooo true.
Technically? I could buy that.
Observationally? Could have fooled millions of people.
Doesn’t look that way.
Doesn’t sound that way.
Doesn’t waddle that way.
Doesn’t lay eggs that way.
Doesn’t swim that way.
Doesn’t fly that way.
Doesn’t quack that way.
These “tele-evangelist’s” that you speak of are only a blimp on the radar. They will one day answer to God for their deception! There are thousands of God-fearing protestant pastors in churches across this land who make huge sacrifices to do what they do. There are also thousands of others throughout the world. There are missionaries who put their lives on the line daily and some who die for their faith. Millions will spend eternity in heaven because of the protestant reformation. On the other hand, millions of Catholics who thought they were saved by the church instead of faith in Christ will split hell wide-open. Their blood will also be on the hands of popes, bishops, and priest who led the masses astray.
= =
INDEED.
You Roman Catholics are so full of yourselves. You have encrusted the Gospel, and the Word of God, with your traditions.
There will be a Day of Reckoning!
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TRUE.
However, look at the long centuries—1600 years—they’ve been doing it.
Satan whispers this idea, that idea, this nuance, that nuance . . . another Mary dogma here; another Mary dogma there . . . another “saint” here, another “saint there . . .
At least now, we don’t have the Chief magicsterical Pontificator running around loose with an army slaughtering authentic Believers left and right.
Welll put.
I think many times you tend to be technically accurate.
But still somehow miss the boat.
It’s even plausible to me that you have a genuine RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD and that somehow the mess of the RC edifice manages to help facilitate that RELATIONSHIP for you.
Praise The Lord and Pass the ammunition.
When you seem to get all bound up in your underwear over the Mary stuff and some other RC edifice stuff that smacks of outrageous idolatry, blasphemy, sheer and utter nonsense historically, logically, linguistically . . . that leaves me shaking my head in dismay and mystified that a bright fellow like you would fall for such a pile of stinking tradition and traditions of men.
AMEN! AMEN! AMEN!
EXCELLENT POINTS ABOUT PEBBLE PETER.
HOGWASH.
God has persistently confirmed HIS WORD
with signs following
amongst those who are broken, of contrite heart before Him . . . willing to stand before Him clothed ‘only’ in CHRIST’S RIGHTEOUSNESS
with none of the hoopla and accoutraments of the professional RELIGIOUS politicians of the Roman magicsterical.
Shoot—God even confirms with signs following in small groups of Charismatic Roman believers.
Pretty Gracious of Him, imho.
AMEN!
However, when one construes reality as such that one’s OWN RELIGOUS CLUB is the ONLY right one . . . then it’s very easy to be haughty toward others for a lonnnnng list of reasons.
That old IN-GROUP/OUT-GROUP stuff.
It’s at odds with Scripture. There’s no need for further sacrifices. Jesus did it once, and he sat down at the right hand of God. Done.
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I agree.
Good post.
Freegards
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