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Gaelic_Bard
Guest
Of course it would, because the word of God will always be greater than man’s. And popes and Councils will always have the potential to err and contradict.
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SonCatcher
Guest
Indeed. Even without the word, all Christians necessarily must accept some kind of cleansing (aka purification/purgation). Otherwise, they would have to assert that their sinful inclinations go with them into God’s presence.
Whatever it is at/after the point of death that removes our sinful desires, that is what Catholics call Purgatory. (Of course Jesus does that - Latin Catholics just feel the need to give a proper name to every step).
C
CJECulver
Guest
Orthodox do not reject the Assumption; in fact, they celebrate the Feast of the Assumption on the same day as the Catholic Church. They simply do not define it dogmatically.
Orthodoxy does, to my understanding, reject the Immaculate Conception.
And, of course, the real issue, in many respects, for the Lutheran reformers was not the Purgatory doctrine itself, but what they saw as the abuses that grew up around the doctrine; the indulgences, private masses, etc.
Jon
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pablope
Guest
But then this begs the question…who determines what is and what does not supercede Scripture?
Is there an authority on protestantism who can absolutely determine this? Or is it according to one’s own interpretation?
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pablope
Guest
Apostolic succession…and bias against anything Catholic. Notice, they will read and adhere and read and believe anyone…so long as it is not catholic.
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CJECulver
Guest
In the evangelical circles I was in, I’m not sure this was quite right. Skills such as expertise in Biblical Hebrew and Greek were highly prized because they allowed one to get at the “true meaning” of Scripture – to peer behind the translations, as it were. This is simply a reflection of the belief in sola scriptura. But, at least in isolation, facility in the original languages didn’t – again, in my tradition – confer on one any doctrinal authority. We often consulted Greek and Hebrew authorities with whom we had large doctrinal differences, nor did it ever occur to us that the one should follow the other. Being evangelicals, we didn’t carry the fundamentalist distrust of scholarship. Neither, however, did we confer doctrinal authority on it.
Some facility with original languages was expected of all pastors, preachers and others to whom we ascribed a measure of doctrinal authority, but only as a subset of the skills defining his authority. Evangelicals (I won’t speak for mainline denominations, with whom I have little experience) seldom or never consulted historians. In reflecting back it’s pretty clear that for defining “authority” were pretty subjective – basically, how good did the preacher or pastor make me feel; though we would never have thought of it in those terms. We would have expressed it as an ability to clearly explicate the Word of God (judged, of course, by ourselves), evidence of a sincere spirituality (again, judged in terms of how closely the individual adhered to our evangelical conceptions of spirituality). Of course, looking back on evangelicalism now, I’m occasionally amazed at how easily fooled we could be.
Again emphasizing that I’m speaking out of my non-denominational evangelical background, I’m not sure I’d agree. Academics in biblical scholarship compete for academic honors in pretty much the same way as academia in general. But that does not translate into spiritual or doctrinal authority. Academics are academics. Doctrinal authority rests with one’s own church and leaders. My own pastor was the greatest doctrinal authority in my life (with the understanding that even he had to be held to the standards of Scripture), despite his lack of academic standing.
Academics were useful for getting at the “data” – what does the original Greek say; what was the cultural milieu out of which Jeremiah spoke; and so forth. But the data were just useful tools; it carried little doctrinal weight.
My own pastor was truly a man of prayer, a dedicated servant, a strong preach and explicator of God’s Word, etc. He wasn’t an academic by any definition of the word. His authority was much more defined based on how well he modeled evangelical ideals than on any academic credentials.
But of course, being firm believers in sola scriptura, we always made a great show (in hindsight an empty show) of checking what our pastor said against what the Bible taught. In hindsight, it’s no surprise we never found any discrepancies, since in practice what I believed the Bible taught was defined by what my pastor (and church) believed it taught.
Like Catholicism, there were doctrinal points on which it was permissible to disagree (pre-, mid- or post-tribber?), and those where disagreement wasn’t tolerated. Historic doctrines such as the Trinity were non-negotiables, because we insisted the Scriptures taught it – and we had our standard proof-texts to convince ourselves of that. But the Immaculate Conception? Purgatory? not in the Bible, therefore not worthy of belief.
In short, because we didn’t belong to any denomination, doctrinal authority, implicitly and occasionally explicitly, was vested in our church and its leadership.
C
CJECulver
Guest
It’s a complex question and ultimately within Protestantism you find as many answers as there are Protestant denominations.
Nothing, of course, “supercedes” Scripture. Everything is, theoretically, subjected to the Scriptures.
Though oddly, as you move into the more liberal wings of protestantism, it becomes clear that the Bible itself doesn’t really get that much respect. Protestants of a more feminist persuasion will often propound on how chauvanistic it is. In some circles one gains academic points by how well one “deconstructs” the biblical texts. Scholars associated with the Jesus Seminar, for example, seems to take a perverse pride in how low they can drag the Scriptures; “proving” gnostic influences on the text gains you academic status (cf. the Jesus Seminar’s championing of the Gospel of Thomas); holding a high view of Scripture will get you “disbarred”.
The liberal wings of Protestantism tend to be highly relativist. If you were to ask them about spiritual authority, they’d probably scoff at the notion entirely.
As to what is or is not taught in the Scriptures, I’d say the rank and file pew warmer will pretty much go with whatever his or her own denomination says, though the more inquisitive are free to reach across denominational lines, so long as, amongst more conservative protestants, they don’t deviate too far from their own denomination’s teachings.
As to an “absolute” authority, Protestants would insist there isn’t any beyond the Scriptures themselves. It’s not a problem for them (though ultimately it became one for me, which is where my conversion to Catholicism began).
C
CJECulver
Guest
There are Protestants who believe such perfection occurs in this lifetime, some at the moment of conversion (hence, anyone who falls from that perfection must’ve not truly have been saved), some at a later point.
C
CJECulver
Guest
In my evangelical church we claimed to reject purgatory, but we were quite familiar with the scriptures that talked of a cleansing, a trial as of by fire, an ultimate purification. We just never realized we were really talking around the edges of the Catholic doctrine of purgatory.
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Monergistic
Guest
I did read the rest of your reply, but I want to kind of focus in on this. I don’t have a specific dictionary definition of authority in mind, but I do have some general concepts in mind. Conceptually, I’m looking at how the Magisterium operates as a referee and a decider and where/who/what Protestantism has to offer that can fulfill a necessary function in a different way. Protestants are frequently asked, if it’s just you and your Bible, who’s the decider when people disagree about an interpretation? The answer that I’ve come up with is that expertise is the answer which may be possessed personally or accessed in some way, and maybe that has to do with grammar, maybe not. When I talk about this, I’m trying to describe the people who operate as deciders, even if they don’t hold an official Chair of Decidership. The implication is that I’m describing a process where people are looking for the truth, and through some process of consulting someone’s expertise, they found the truth. It worked. Really, they don’t just think it worked, it actually worked.
So I understand that there’s a lot of bad ways to do this, mostly involving a destination of certitude rather than truth. I know this, and I have seen it too. What I attempted to describe was no mere play for certitude (as much as that does happen), but a process whereby truth is ascertained. If experts are doing that- this does warrant some legitimate use of the word “authority,” does it not?
I also understand that you left non-denominational Evangelicalism, and maybe this had to do with believing you were among certitude-seekers and nobody had a good way of seeking and finding truth for real. So I am starting to understand that I may be describing something whose existence you do not believe in, which would make this conversation at least a little bit different from what I expected.
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CJECulver
Guest
I’m not sure what parts of your post to quote, as I’m not at all sure I’m following what you’re trying to get at.
It seems you’re attempting to distinguish between certitude and truth, and how this all applies to the Magisterium and authority, but I confess I’m not understanding how you’re trying to put all the pieces together.
Therefore, I’ll just ramble.
The Magisterium of the Catholic Church is generally understood as the Church’s “teaching authority” and the ultimate, certain arbiter of truth. This is what I’m focused on in my discussion of authority. Who or what discerns and arbitrates the Truth (I’ll capitalize it).
Certitude, on the other hand, is simply a psychological certainty; entirely subjective. Psychologically, many people need to feel a certitude about their beliefs; others are OK with varying levels of ambiguity and uncertainty. Those who have a stronger psychological need for certainty tend to follow two paths – either into fundamentalism or into the Catholic Church (or well, Orthodoxy or some such).
Though Christianity teaches that absolute Truth is out there, for each of us individually, the certainty that we’ve found Truth can never be more than a psychological certitude, which amounts to an unwavering faith in our source of authority, whatever we choose it to be.
I guess in some ways, I fall into the camp of those needing a certain level of psychological certitude. This began to come to a head for me during my graduate studies in theology at a prominent evangelical school. On several subjects I considered important at the time I had twice or thrice arrived at a certitude, a belief that I’d found Truth, only some months later to find myself considering some new angle or reconsidering an old one, ultimately to invest psychological certitude in a completely different answer. It didn’t help that amongst all my fellow graduate students, who came from a spectrum of protestant traditions, no two seemed to agree, either.
Eventually, perhaps I simply wearied of the task of always having to fight (and then fight again) the same battles. I came to view this psychological certitude as a sort of a false prophet, a red herring, and unreliable compass, and I realized I couldn’t continue as an evangelical. What good did it do to search for Truth if no better compass existed?
So I was faced with a decision: fundamentalism or a Catholic-like faith. I was too open-minded to ever be comfortable as a fundamentalist, so I reached the conclusion that the answer to my dilemma was either that there WAS no ultimate authority, or that there was. The former was precisely where I found myself in evangelicalism. The latter pointed toward Catholicism or something like it, and that’s what started me taking a closer look at the Catholic Church. In a sense, I suppose one could say my decision to place my trust in the Catholic Magisterium was simply a continuation of my quest for certitude, but to me the Catholic answer did (and does) carry certain objective advantages.
But that’s all biography.
In the context of this discussion, when I’ve used the word “authority” I’ve intended specifically “doctrinal authority”. There are other kinds of authority, of course, or authority in other fields. We recognized as authorities in biblical languages, for example, but we never would have tried to build a theological argument on top of, say, Strong’s Concordance.
So yes, even evangelicals are willing to ascribe academic authority to academics, and we recognized academic authorities as aids is finding the Truth. But to say that is still to say something distinct from ascribing to academics doctrinal or “teaching” authority a la the Catholic Magisterium.
Or at least so the evangelicals of my experience believe. I admit this isn’t a question I’ve thought about in some years.
At the time I was just beginning to understand the distinction between psychological certitude and a real apprehension of Truth, and that the former was not at all a reliable guide to the latter. The question would be phrased, by any evangelical who thought to ask it, “But how can we know FOR SURE we’re saved?”, or some such, followed by the trotting out of some anecdotal example of a lifelong Christian who suddenly turned agnostic.
Or, in my case, discovering that for the third time in as many years I’d reached psychological certitude on some doctrinal point only to realize that all I’d really achieved was to lose faith in psychological certitude.
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CJECulver
Guest
I’m not sure what you’re getting at here. I believe in Truth – that there is objective, absolute Truth out there. Further, my own experience in evangelicalism has taught me the distinction between psychological certitude and Truth, and that the former is an untrustworthy guide to the latter.
I could succumb to relativism at this point, asserting that because none of us can know with absolute (as opposed to psychological) certainty that Truth exists, therefore it doesn’t. But I choose (if for no more than aesthetic reasons) to believe in Truth, and therefore, having learned to distrust certitude, I can see only one other solution: a Magisterium stamped with God’s own imprimatur.
But I keep slipping back into biography mode, which is not what this conversation is supposed to be about.
The standard evangelical line is that all teaching is to be tested by its fidelity to the Scriptures. There may be traditions which are not opposed by the Scriptures; they are relatively innoculous, and one would be free to observe them or not, thought it would be important to stress that though observing them does no harm, neither does it accrue to a Christian’s advantage. Evangelical theological is decidely opposed to sacramentalism.
In practice, however, “testing all teachings through prayer and the Holy Spirit’s guidance lagainst the Scriptures” really means testing everything for fidelity to the faith I’d learned from my particular branch of evangelical Christianity. Which, of course, I simply assumed was Biblical Christianity.
T
Tomster
Guest
You must admit, though, that Sacred Tradition existed before the New Testament canon was finalized.
Your position is not only illogical, it is also contradictory. When non-Catholics speak of faith in the Scriptures, they must certainly mean a profession of divine faith. They declare that only the books of the Old and New Testaments are the sole rule and guide, by which all dogmas and all doctors must be weighed and judged.
This statement contains three points.
(1) The first point declares that, not only are all those books sacred and divine, but also that they are the only books, truly sacred and divine, which constitute the only Rule of Faith.
(2) The second point proclaims that “there is no other word of God but those divine and sacred books which must be believed, nor any other doctrine of faith, which is not contained in, and which cannot be proved by, those divine and sacred books.”
(3) The third point asserts that everyone of the faithful is a sufficient interpreter of the true sense of the Sacred Scriptures and that all dogmas and all doctors must be considered and judged according to those divine and sacred books, which form the only Rule of Faith. Hence, they deny that the Church is the authentic interpreter of the true sense of the Scriptures; on the contrary, they claim that such right of interpretation belongs to every man and woman. This is what is called the right of private judgment.
Unfortunately, however, for our separated brethren, none of these three points , which according to them, are the fundamental doctrine of their belief, is contained in the Scriptures. If they search the Scriptures from cover to cover, they will not find any one of them. The consequence is, therefore, that while they believe, declare, and proclaim, that nothing is to be believed , which is not written in Scriptures, at the same time they believe, declare, and proclaim, as a fundamental principle of their religion, what was never written in the Scriptures.
This is something affirmative and negative of the same principle.
It is a contradiction.
A
aidanbradypop
Guest
Very well stated. I have tried many times to get an answer to such thing but seem never to get one. They always point to a verse to prove a point that really does not prove the point.
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Tomster
Guest
I don’t mean to be snide or sarcastic GB, but, can you honestly say that as a Baptist you accept all of the teachings of the Lutheran Church or the Anglican Church or the Methodist Church or any other non-Catholic denomination?
Take baptismal regeneration. It is my understanding that most, if not all, Baptists do not believe in it. Lutherans, for the most part, do.
By Baptist and Lutheran standards, both of your denominations adhere to searching the Scriptures to determine what is orthodox, Christian teaching.
Now, having said that, how could both denominations come up with different beliefs on this matter?
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aidanbradypop
Guest
Good question
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Tomster
Guest
Hence, the error.Good question
By rejecting the authority of the Church, they have rejected the subject of Divine Tradition, which is the Teaching Church and kept only the object, or rather a part of the object of Revelation.
No matter how they try to spin it, they are hopelessly lost in their man-made traditions.
C
Chiefsinner
Guest
Amen Brother!
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benjohnson
Guest
You really need to come pay a visit us LCMS Lutherans (or any other confessional Lutheran church). We’re not perfect, only Christ is perfect, but we know exactly where we are and where we’re going. If anything, we’re often accused of being too precise. .
If you ever need a kick in the pants and a go to an early Catholic Mass and then go visit a LCMS church to hear the gospel vigorously and correctly proclaimed. You’ll know exactly where you are in your sin-filled life, and you’ll know exactly where the cross is.
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