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To: NYer

“Our Lord provided us with an authoritative body that can express the Truths of Revelation over time and cultures without error. A body that has the authority to interpret the Sacred Texts and present them to all cultures and times. “

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You are merely pushing back your supposed problem by one level.

The Magesterium is ALSO subject to the limitations of time and culture. It’s pronouncements ALSO need to be interpreted.

If God was, according to your way of thinking, unable to clearly and adequately express Himself in the Bible, what makes you think He is capable of doing so through the Magesterium?


3 posted on 02/03/2012 6:46:56 AM PST by PetroniusMaximus
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To: PetroniusMaximus
You are merely pushing back your supposed problem by one level.
The Magesterium is ALSO subject to the limitations of time and culture. It’s pronouncements ALSO need to be interpreted.
If God was, according to your way of thinking, unable to clearly and adequately express Himself in the Bible, what makes you think He is capable of doing so through the Magesterium?

Pardon my interprtation, I don't THINK that the poster was saying that God was unable to clearly and adequately express Himself in the Bible.

God spoke through his chosen spokespeople. FIRST came the Magesterium, that is, the twelve Apostles, THEN came the Bible, 400 years later.

Also, there HAD to be a "final" source, an unimpeachable source. According to the Catholics, the Pope is that infallible source. They also believe that the Holy Spirit CONTINUES to inspire the Church and give the Pope that inspiration to be a final authority, as the Pope says He speaks through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
Protestantism didn't surface until 1500 years later, thanks to the anger of a Catholic priest. Meanwhile, the years from 33-1500 WERE fruitful years which spread Christ's Word throughout the world.

Seems to me, God got it right on the money with His path of Apostolic Tradition, the Catholic Church, and THEN the Bible 400 years later.

6 posted on 02/03/2012 6:59:49 AM PST by cloudmountain
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To: PetroniusMaximus

-—You are merely pushing back your supposed problem by one level.
The Magesterium is ALSO subject to the limitations of time and culture. It’s pronouncements ALSO need to be interpreted.-—

It’s the difference between a living authority and a dead letter.

Regardless, the teaching authority of the Church is real and true, while the doctrine of “the Bible ALONE” is man-made, incoherent and false.

Why? See below.

Proving Inspiration

The Catholic method of proving the Bible to be inspired is this: The Bible is initially approached as any other ancient work. It is not, at first, presumed to be inspired. From textual criticism we are able to conclude that we have a text the accuracy of which is more certain than the accuracy of any other ancient work. 
 
An Accurate Text

Sir Frederic Kenyon, in The Story of the Bible, notes that “For all the works of classical antiquity we have to depend on manuscripts written long after their original composition. The author who is the best case in this respect is Virgil, yet the earliest manuscript of Virgil that we now possess was written some 350 years after his death. For all other classical writers, the interval between the date of the author and the earliest extant manuscript of his works is much greater. For Livy it is about 500 years, for Horace 900, for most of Plato 1,300, for Euripides 1,600.” Yet no one seriously disputes that we have accurate copies of the works of these writers. However, in the case of the New Testament we have parts of manuscripts dating from the first and early second centuries, only a few decades after the works were penned. 

Not only are the biblical manuscripts that we have older than those for classical authors, we have in sheer numbers far more manuscripts from which to work. Some are whole books of the Bible, others fragments of just a few words, but there are literally thousands of manuscripts in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Coptic, Syriac, and other languages. This means that we can be sure we have an authentic text, and we can work from it with confidence. 
 
The Bible as Historical Truth

Next we take a look at what the Bible, considered merely as a history, tells us, focusing particularly on the New Testament, and more specifically the Gospels. We examine the account contained therein of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. 

Using what is in the Gospels themselves and what we find in extra-biblical writings from the early centuries, together with what we know of human nature (and what we can otherwise, from natural reason alone, know of divine nature), we conclude that either Jesus was just what he claimed to be—God—or he was crazy. (The one thing we know he could not have been was merely a good man who was not God, since no merely good man would make the claims he made.) 

We are able to eliminate the possibility of his being a madman not just from what he said but from what his followers did after his death. Many critics of the Gospel accounts of the resurrection claim that Christ did not truly rise, that his followers took his body from the tomb and then proclaimed him risen from the dead. According to these critics, the resurrection was nothing more than a hoax. Devising a hoax to glorify a friend and mentor is one thing, but you do not find people dying for a hoax, at least not one from which they derive no benefit. Certainly if Christ had not risen his disciples would not have died horrible deaths affirming the reality and truth of the resurrection. The result of this line of reasoning is that we must conclude that Jesus indeed rose from the dead. Consequently, his claims concerning himself—including his claim to be God—have credibility. He meant what he said and did what he said he would do. 

Further, Christ said he would found a Church. Both the Bible (still taken as merely a historical book, not yet as an inspired one) and other ancient works attest to the fact that Christ established a Church with the rudiments of what we see in the Catholic Church today—papacy, hierarchy, priesthood, sacraments, and teaching authority. 

We have thus taken the material and purely historically concluded that Jesus founded the Catholic Church. Because of his Resurrection we have reason to take seriously his claims concerning the Church, including its authority to teach in his name. 

This Catholic Church tells us the Bible is inspired, and we can take the Church’s word for it precisely because the Church is infallible. Only after having been told by a properly constituted authority—that is, one established by God to assure us of the truth concerning matters of faith—that the Bible is inspired can we reasonably begin to use it as an inspired book. 


9 posted on 02/03/2012 7:15:59 AM PST by St_Thomas_Aquinas
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To: PetroniusMaximus

Because the Bible is static while the Magisterium is not.


64 posted on 02/03/2012 5:11:29 PM PST by papertyger
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To: PetroniusMaximus; metmom; boatbums; caww; smvoice; presently no screen name; Lera; Quix


These things led me to realize that if the Body of Christ has to go at Faith with a Bible Alone approach we are doomed. The time, culture and language separations are a huge obstacle to getting at the actual meaning of the texts, with all the nuance and subtlety that comes with theological understanding and the development of those concepts.

Sadly, for all the talk about understanding context, Roman Catholics constantly miscomprehended the “sola in SS to mean the Bible alone is to be used, and as opposed the church magisterium, as if Westminster confession did not say things like,

“The whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man's salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture... and that there are some circumstances concerning the worship of God, and government of the Church, common to human actions and societies, which are to be ordered by the light of nature and Christian prudence, according to the general rules of the Word, which are always to be observed.”

It belongs to synods and councils, ministerially to determine controversies of faith, and cases of conscience; to set down rules and directions for the better ordering of the public worship of God, and government of his Church; to receive complaints in cases of maladministration, and authoritatively to determine the same; which decrees and determinations, if consonant to the Word of God, are to be received with reverence and submission; not only for their agreement with the Word, but also for the power whereby they are made, as being an ordinance of God appointed thereunto in His Word. (CHAPTERs 1, 31)

And from Alister McGrath's The Genesis of Doctrine: A Study in the Foundation of Doctrinal Criticism:

Although it is often suggested that the reformers had no place for tradition in their theological deliberations, this judgment is clearly incorrect. While the notion of tradition as an extra-scriptural source of revelation is excluded, the classic concept of tradition as a particular way of reading and interpreting scripture is retained. Scripture, tradition and the kerygma are regarded as essentially coinherent, and as being transmitted, propagated and safeguarded by the community of faith. There is thus a strongly communal dimension to the magisterial reformers' understanding of the interpretation of scripture, which is to be interpreted and proclaimed within an ecclesiological matrix. It must be stressed that the suggestion that the Reformation represented the triumph of individualism and the total rejection of tradition is a deliberate fiction propagated by the image-makers of the Enlightenment. — James R. Payton, “Getting the Reformation Wrong: Correcting Some Misunderstandings”

Also, THE SECOND HELVETIC CONFESSION - Page 2 (Heinrich Bullinger: Calvinist confession; adopted by the Reformed Church not only throughout Switzerland but in Scotland (1566), Hungary (1567), France (1571), Poland (1578), and next to the Heidelberg Catechism is the most generally recognized Confession of the Reformed Church.) states,

Interpretations of the Holy Fathers. Wherefore we do not despise the interpretations of the holy Greek and Latin fathers, nor reject their disputations and treatises concerning sacred matters as far as they agree with the Scriptures; but we modestly dissent from them when they are found to set down things differing from, or altogether contrary to, the Scriptures. Neither do we think that we do them any wrong in this matter; seeing that they all, with one consent, will not have their writings equated with the canonical Scriptures, but command us to prove how far they agree or disagree with them, and to accept what is in agreement and to reject what is in disagreement.

Meanwhile, for all their talk of certainty, to repeat what i have said before, while Roman Catholics look to an assuredly infallible magisterium and its pronouncements, they have made a fallible choice to do so, and must use fallible human reasoning in deciding which ones are infallible, and at least some of what they mean, as well as much of the other teachings of Rome. In reality, while Catholics subscribe to a certain set of core beliefs, allowable and disallowable disagreements within Rome are substantial even if they do not result in as many formal divisions.

Furthermore, the basis for Rome's claim is derived from Scripture, Tradition and history, yet under this basis we still see still many divisions* between Catholic churches who like Rome claim an assuredly infallible magisterium based upon Scripture, Tradition and history.

Under Sola Scriptura, souls also make a human decision to trust in an assuredly infallible authority, that being the Divinely established Scriptures, and also must exercise fallible human reasoning, if prayerfully, in understanding what it means. And under which there usually is a denominational magisterium, which again, is effectively all that Rome has herself. However, even without a central magisterium, they overall subscribe and manifestly contend for a limited set of core beliefs, outside of which one is rendered a heretic, yet outside of which allowable and disallowable disagreements are substantial and even result in many formal divisions (although evangelicals manifest a remarkable degree of spiritual unity in manifold ways which transcends denominations.)

Finally, the quality if not quantity, of the unity based upon implicit assent to an assuredly infallible magisterium can hardly be said to be superior to the unity attained by the Berean hearts and method, even if relatively rare.

Therefore as said, division is only about degrees, with any superiority of Rome's model being that of organizational unity, which any single denomination can compete with, while exhibiting essential spiritual unity across the lines and evidencing more fruits of regeneration, as they preached not themselves but Christ Jesus the Lord.

*














122 posted on 02/03/2012 11:01:14 PM PST by daniel1212 (Trust in the Lord Jesus to save you as a contrite damned+morally destitute sinner + be forgiven+live)
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To: PetroniusMaximus; Alex Murphy; boatbums; CynicalBear; daniel1212; ealgeone; Elsie; Gamecock; ...
The Magesterium is ALSO subject to the limitations of time and culture. It’s pronouncements ALSO need to be interpreted.

If God was, according to your way of thinking, unable to clearly and adequately express Himself in the Bible, what makes you think He is capable of doing so through the Magesterium?

OUCH!!!!!!!!!

312 posted on 08/21/2020 9:29:32 PM PDT by metmom (...fixing our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith...)
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