Love, Minus the Condemnation

I apologize for the length of my posts. As I'm sure you are aware, though, thorough answers don't necessarily lend themselves to bumper sticker responses. I do thank you for bearing with me here.

The Councils did, of course, have Scripture to look to, but they had to decide which were canonical and which were not. On what basis did they do this? They could only have done it through logic and Tradition (guided by the Holy Spirit, of course).

I think that there is an important part of the picture we are not looking at here. The Councils to which you are referring did not pull the canon out of thin air. They did not say, "You know what we really need? Scriptures of our own. Let's go through all the books floating around that people seem to think are inspired and create an authoritative list." Discussions regarding the "true canon" had gone on from the moment that writings from the apostles began circulating and the official canon had fully developed in an organic manner before any council weighed in on the matter.

Before I go on, I will repeat my earlier statement that Protestants do not consider "tradition" to be bad. Scripture itself, along with its canon, is a form of tradition -- it falls under the category of "Paradosis." What we would argue, however, is that various sources of tradition have varying levels of authority. A letter by a Frankish bishop in 900 AD is not necessarily as authoritative as, say, a bona fide Father of the Church. The writings of a Father of the Church are not more authoritative than the writings of the Apostles and Prophets, the Scriptures themselves. A river cannot rise higher than its source; a tradition is only as authoritative as the manner in which it was transmitted. Apart from Scripture, the sources of tradition come from fallible men. That is why we teach Sola Scriptura -- Scripture is the standard against which all other traditions must be compared because it is the only truly infallible form of Paradosis that we have.

I digress, however; back to my main point. I think it would be useful at this point to clarify which Councils we are referring to here. Usually, when Catholic apologists make the argument that the canons were set by Church Councils, they are referring to the Synod of Hippo in 393 AD and the Council of Carthage in 397 AD. In terms of apologetics, it's a great talking point that had me convinced for quite a while back when I first converted to the Catholic Church. "Protestants wouldn't even know what books belong in the Bible if not for the Councils of the Catholic Church! You can thank us later!" Unfortunately, when examined in depth, that argument is flawed from both a historical and dogmatic standpoint.

Historically, the canon with which we ended up existed prior to the Synod of Hippo and the Council of Carthage. Origen supposedly used a canon consisting of the same 27 books as early as the early 200s AD. At that time, there was a large amount of discussion regarding the Antilegomena ( Letter to the Hebrews, James, II Peter, II and III John, and Revelation -- the canonicity of these books was still in distpute) but the rest of the New Testament was more or less agreed upon among orthodox Christians. The Muratorian fragment, in fact, dates back to around 200 AD and lists a set of writings very close to the New Testament canon we have today, complete with arguments against objections to those books. Jumping a century and a half into the future, St. Athanasius mentioned all 27 books of the New Testament and referred to them as "canonized" in his Easter letter a full 26 years prior to the Synod of Hippo. By the time the of Hippo and Carthage, the matter arguable was largely considered to have been authoritatively settled. St. Augustine himself, who called the councils, had considered the matter already closed before calling the councils. The councils didn't really settle anything that hadn't been considered settled already, for the most part.

There is one other problem with the Hippo/Carthage argument, however. Hippo was a local synod and Carthage was a local council. Neither was Ecumenical in nature. Neither was called upon by an Emperor or Pope to settle the matter authoritatively although they were ratified by the Church in Rome (which was the patriarchial seat of the West at the time, arguments of papal supremacy aside). Local councils aren't convoked under the auspices of infallibility as that doctrine has come to be understood in the Catholic Church. The Councils in question did not create a new canon and, being local councils, they were not considered binding throughout the Universal Church at the time -- the Sees of the East did not see it necessary to bind themselves to its decision. The biggest problem for Catholic apologists who utilize the "Councils" objection to the Canon of Scripture is that the Catholic Church itself did not actually dogmatically define the canon in a binding manner until the Council of Trent in 1546 AD, after the Reformation had occur. When Martin Luther was trying to determine which books belonged in the New Testament, he wasn't rebelling against something which had been dogmatically agreed upon prior to his being ousted from the Catholic Church, but was rather trying to figure out something which, dogmatically speaking, was still up in the air prior to his ejection. Protestants did come to dogmatically agree upon the same New Testament canon as Catholics, but they did so quite independently of any dogmatic declarations of the Catholic Church. Calvinists agreed upon their canon with the Gallic Confession of Faith of 1559. The Church of England set its canon with the Thirty-Nine Articles in 1563. The Eastern Orthodox, for what it's worth, did not dogmatically settle the issue until the Synod of Jerusalem in 1672.

This post is already way too long and I've addressed what I considered to be the substantive part of this discussion -- the rest seems to boil down to differences of opinion between us that tie into our different understandings of Christianity. As a Catholic, you see Christianity focused around God through the Church. You believe that the Church has a God-given duty to cultivate faith within the people, and thus it is essential that the people have access to what you consider the Truth right from the start. Protestants, however, see Christianity as focused on God through the individual believer. God calls His own by working His grace upon the heart of the individual believer, who then goes out in active search for his Lord. The individual who starts and remains in a "mediocre" church (whatever that is... for our purposes I'll call it a spiritually dead church) and never grows as a Christian was never called to begin with. The True Christian cannot be satisfied with such and actively seeks Life in Christ. Note that such does not mean that he will necessarily go to the place that teaches theology closest to what is true, although it does mean he will be drawn to a place where those orthodox basics are taught (that which is summed up best in the Creeds), as that is where life is. Christ did not send us the Holy Spirit to make us theologians, possessing perfect understandings of how and why God works in the way He does. That would be even more futile than my dog trying to understand why I am telling him to go outside -- maybe it's because he did something bad and I am punishing him, maybe it's because I think he needs to go do his business, maybe it's because it's a nice day and I think he should get some exercise, or maybe it's because I want him to chase away that squirrel that keeps getting into the bird feed. The important part isn't that he understands why I put him out, but rather that he goes out. And my dog has a better chance of figuring out my purposes than I ever have of understanding God's. With God, all that is important is that we are called, we seek, we find, and we obey. God will forgive us if we get some of the particulars wrong so long as we were sincere in our obedience.

Also, to be clear, unlike many Protestants around here I do not consider the Catholic Church to be a dead Church. I do believe faithful Catholics such as yourself to be brothers in Christ, although I do not believe you have the monopoly on truth that you believe yourselves to have. The same goes for the Orthodox. I've spent more than ten years wrestling with these questions and they are not nearly as clean and clear-cut as most people on all sides would like. At the end of the day, we are all going to be right about some matters and we are all going to be wrong about others. I've come to the conclusion, however, that such is not really what Christ is concerned about -- all Christ cares about is that we seek and strive to serve Him in an earnest manner. It is essential to seek out the Truth wherever it may be. It is often folly, however, to assume we have it (beyond the essentials that no orthodox Christians dispute) in full.

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