Aren't protestants following tradition too?

[Tomster]

I don’t think I said that, and if I did, than I would be incorrect and I apologize. I’m advancing the idea that the LCMS is not rudderless and a good way of showing that is in our consistent proclamation of the Gospel.

But here’s the rub Ben. The title of this thread is “Aren’t protestants following tradition too?”.

Before I get too wound up let me say that I realize that some non-Catholic Christians take offense to the word Protestant when it is applied to them or their particular church. When I use that word I am not trying to aggrevate anyone.

That being said, we Catholics have shown, conclusively I might add, that all Protestant faith traditions absolutely depend on some type of extra-biblical tradition to support their reason for being. Having said that, we have shown that by putting the Bible above everything else and letting the private judgment of individuals interpret what must believed you run into very serious problems. The 500 year history Protestantism has shown what private judgment can do to group of well intentioned believers. This is where a divinely guided authority can step in and insure orthodox belief. And we believe that Jesus did in fact provide for that divinely guided authority and that it was to last until the end of time.

 

[benjohnson]

Denise1957:

My mistake. A reader (usually a layperson) reads the Gospel…rather than preaches it.

We’re stinkers to our lay people - only the pastor is allowed to read the Gospel.

I happen to live in a Lutheran neighborhood My neighborhood Lutheran church
had, for a long time, written on its sign out front, “open and affirming,”

Awesome! I sometimes drag other Lutherans to the Catholic EF Mass close to where you are. We love it.

I think I know the Lutheran church you’re speaking of… I’ll try to politely keep my judgement to this: that they seek the confirmation of man, and not the justification of God. We would not consider them confessional Lutherans.

But the Church herself still properly teaches the Dogmas of the faith…as it always has.

I may not agree that it always has, but I do agree that is does quite well now. Let us work to keep it that way.

 

[benjohnson]

But here’s the rub Ben. The title of this thread is “Aren’t protestants following tradition too?”.
The 500 year history Protestantism has shown what private judgment can do to group of well intentioned believers. This is where a divinely guided authority can step in and insure orthodox belief. And we believe that Jesus did in fact provide for that divinely guided authority and that it was to last until the end of time.

I certainly understand what you are saying, as I share your concerns and observations about ignoring Tradition.

I have to admit that I’m not a fan of being lumped in with the Calvinist and Anabaptists - it’s the whole reason the LCMS church in America exists. A Calvinist prince was forcing us to merge with the Calvinist church - and murdering us if we refused. In order to remain alive and true to God at the same time, we moved to America in poverty. We’re still a bit testy about that - we lost our Bishops and cathedrals in the process.

We too claim guidance from the Holy Spirit, and as evidenced by recent Popes, we can see the Holy Spirit at work in your church. May we continue in this manor and find ourselves reconciled around the altar rail.

 

[Denise1957]

Denise1957;10604453:

My mistake. A reader (usually a layperson) reads the Gospel…rather than preaches it.

We’re stinkers to our lay people - only the pastor can do the Gospel reading.

I appreciate you comments and insight, Ben. I attended for four years the EF Mass to which you refer above. I now attend the OF at the same parish. Interestingly, the new pastor at St. Al’s uses a lot of Latin the Mass, which he has been slowly incorporating. Very reverent. I love it. FYI. Incidently, the Lutheran parish which I mentioned, though liberal, has beautiful architechture - far nicer than our Local Catholic church, as you know. I’ll not derail the thread further. Back to the topic at hand.

 

[Gaelic_Bard]

benjohnson;10604574:

Denise1957;10604453:

My mistake. A reader (usually a layperson) reads the Gospel…rather than preaches it.

I appreciate you comments and insight, Ben. I attended for four years the EF Mass to which you refer above. I now attend the OF at the same parish. Interestingly, the new pastor at St. Al’s uses a lot of Latin the Mass, which he has been slowly incorporating. Very reverent. I love it. FYI. Incidently, the Lutheran parish which I mentioned, though liberal, has beautiful architechture - far nicer than our Local Catholic church, as you know. I’ll not derail the thread further. Back to the topic at hand.

Must be ELCA then huh?. At any rate…

 

[Gaelic_Bard]

I certainly understand what you are saying, as I share your concerns and observations about ignoring Tradition.

I have to admit that I’m not a fan of being lumped in with the Calvinist and Anabaptists - it’s the whole reason the LCMS church in America exists. A Calvinist prince was forcing us to merge with the Calvinist church - and murdering us if we refused. In order to remain alive and true to God at the same time, we moved to America in poverty. We’re still a bit testy about that - we lost our Bishops and cathedrals in the process.

We too claim guidance from the Holy Spirit, and as evidenced by recent Popes, we can see the Holy Spirit at work in your church. May we continue in this manor and find ourselves reconciled around the altar rail.

Hey none of us Calvinistic Baptists tried to force you to merge. We’re only syncretistic about potlucks

 

[JonNC]

=Tomster;10603480]You must admit, though, that Sacred Tradition existed before the New Testament canon was finalized.

But not before the apostles wrote, and what they wrote is what they taught - orally.

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.

that’s not contradictory at all, much less illogical.

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.”

There is no other word of God that we know of, at least. And therefore, nothing else that can kind the conscience of the believer.

(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.

We’ve spoken often enough for you to know that, in terms of doctrine, Lutherans are bound by scripture, as reflected in the Lutheran Confessions. On these points we have no “right of private judgement”. If I am to be Lutheran, I can’t simply claim, for example, that via my private judgement, that the sacrament is simply sacramental. As far as the CC, what I personally question is whether one patriarch on his own, without councils, without the other patriarchs can determine doctrine and dogma. And that’s not a matter of scripture, but also Sacred Tradition.

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.

And neither is universal jurisdiction (which is also not in the Tradition of the early Church, it seems). Is the pope the Bishop of Rome, and the western patriarch? Absolutely yes.
Fix the schism, Tomster, and Rome’s claim of authority has far more weight.

This is something affirmative and negative of the same principle.

It is a contradiction.

No. Its not.

Jon

 

[Gaelic_Bard]

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?

I am sorry I didn’t see this post earlier, Tom.

You are correct that we differ from Lutherans in those areas. While this is a problem for unity, it is not a problem for the authority of Scripture. While disagreements about those issues are important, the unique authority which we both confess the Scriptures to hold is greater than our disunity in a few key points. Not to mention our unity in matters of Christ, justification, the Trinity, et al. Sola scriptura does not make the claim that everyone is going to reach the same conclusions on everything. That has never happened in Christian history.

Quite frankly, you have the same problem with Sacred Tradition as well. Both you and the Orthodox hold to the authority of Tradition as a separate source of revelatory information. Yet your disagreements are just as prevalent as disagreements between Protestants. If those disagreements pose a problem for the authority and sufficiency of Scripture amongst Protestants, then the authority and sufficiency of Tradition is also undercut.

 

[Monergistic]

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.

You wrote quite a bit there! I did read it all, but I picked just the one point to reply to. If you’d like to revisit or re-mention some other part, I am more than happy to do so.

So this is how I understand your situation so far at the point if giving up. You had this goal in mind- do work, do research, know the truth. Not every single thing, of course, but you were looking for definite answers to questions that you had. You couldn’t reason your way to a satisfying endpoint- you thought you did a couple of times, but each time you discovered you thought wrong in some way.

To me, I see a few possible conclusions you could have chosen to come to. One, you’re frustrated in your search for answers and your process doesn’t seem to be working, maybe you need some combination of patience and a new process. Two, maybe you’re not very good at this but other people are. So you stop trying to become one of the experts and search for a new role, while trusting that there is something to the process that will result in something more concrete than a pile of opinions. Or number three- you were unable to line up certitude with Truth concerning the questions that are important to you, therefore it cannot possibly be done without direct divine assistance given to a college of cardinals that enjoy supernatural protection from error sometimes.

And now, instead of chasing psychological certitude on your own, you have chosen to place your faith in the teachings of the Magisterium, who tell you very simply which teachings require the full measure of your faith and the highest level of certitude (dogmas) and which ones require various other levels of certitude (doctrines). I notice you said you lost faith in psychological certitude, but certitude is part of the basic definition of what dogma and doctrine is to you. So along with asking if you see the roadmap of possibilities in the same way I do, I’m also curious to know if you see yourself as one who’s finally been given a psychological certitude that never needs to be questioned, or if you’re trying to describe a different certitude with some type of distinction between the two. I ask because different types of teaching require various levels of certitude from you. It seems like you’re trusting an infallible guide to help you have confidence in the certitude you were looking for all the way at the beginning, but it also seems like you’re really down on psychological certitude overall.

Those are the questions I have from this portion, maybe there’s something else you want to talk about more?

 

[Reuben_J]

We’re stinkers to our lay people - only the pastor is allowed to read the Gospel.

Same here in the Catholic mass, Ben. The Gospel reading is to be read by the celebrant or con-celebrant or a deacon where the case may be, not a lector (layperson).

 

[Denise1957]

My mistake. A reader (usually a layperson) reads the Gospel…rather than preaches it.

Oops…I messed up here. Don’t know what I was thinking. The priest, of course, reads the Gospel. I was in a hurry to get to work, and not thinking properly, obviously.

 

[Bklynguy]

But doesn’t that conflict with their teaching of Sola Scriptura? Is there a contradiction here?

Well said. As Michael Voris once famously (or infamously, depending on who you talk to) said, “Sola Scriptura is a lie.”

 

[aidanbradypop]

Well said. As Michael Voris once famously (or infamously, depending on who you talk to) said, “Sola Scriptura is a lie.”

Sola Scripture is very much a tradition. It does not have to be a lie if a non Catholic will admit that it is not biblical and simply a tradition on a denomination(s). Non Catholics will often say many things that Catholics do and say are unbiblical. The same could be said for Scripture Alone as well. It is no where to be found in Scripture, yet many non Catholics adhere to this belief. So therefore it is a tradition.

 

[CJECulver]

You wrote quite a bit there! I did read it all, but I picked just the one point to reply to. If you’d like to revisit or re-mention some other part, I am more than happy to do so.

My apologies. Since my first typing class way back in high school, I’ve been a bit of a keyboard phenom. In my heydey I could sustain well over 100 wpm. Typing at the speed of thought means you get pretty much every random impulse that wanders down my synaptic pathways.

One, you’re frustrated in your search for answers and your process doesn’t seem to be working, maybe you need some combination of patience and a new process.

Perhaps it boiled down to patience. But there I was in the midst of graduate theological studies, which meant I was applying myself to the process pretty much 24x7x365. Three or four iterations down the road I began to chronicly second guess myself on everything. “OK, this is what I believe. But what if I’ve missed some important data?” (that would send my back scouring the school libraries), or “What if I’ve messed up in my calculus?”, or “What if I’ve jammed two puzzle pieces together in the wrong way?”, and so forth.

Two, maybe you’re not very good at this but other people are.

But that sword cuts both ways. On the one hand, I recognize that history and the Church are full of people much better at it all than I was – from the great theologians of history right down to my professors. And yet even they couldn’t seem to agree on anything. So something wasn’t working for them, either.

On the other hand, while I may not be the next Thomas Aquinas, I’m better than 90+% of the pew warmers around me on any given Sunday morning, so if I can’t get this all figured out, what hope have they? Surely God couldn’t have intended it to be this hard?

So you stop trying to become one of the experts

See above. I didn’t see that becoming “one of the experts” was going to provide any greater certitude. It wasn’t simply a frustration that something wasn’t working for ME; but that it didn’t appear that anyone else was faring any better. Further, when I raised these concerns with my professors, they didn’t seem to have any better answers than, “That’s just the way it is.” You just have to make your own choices about what you believe. They were, so far as I could tell, comfortable with – or at least resigned to – their state of affairs.

Or number three- you were unable to line up certitude with Truth concerning the questions that are important to you, therefore it cannot possibly be done without direct divine assistance given to a college of cardinals that enjoy supernatural protection from error sometimes.

Well, at that point I wasn’t nearly so far along as “a college of cardinals” or even necessarily “divine protection from error”, but I was rapidly approaching the conclusion that if there was a reliable guide to Truth, wherever or whatever it was, it had to lie somewhere outside of me. Private certitude had failed me often enough that I had abandoned all faith in it; and in any case I was beginning to recognize the utterly subjective nature of private certitude. I was (and am) enough of a Cartesian to believe that the subjective is by nature incapable of being a reliable guide to objective Truth. Though, on the other hand, not enough of an epistemological sceptic to abandon all hope of knowing the Truth.

If all one cares about is subjective certitude, there’s always fundamentalism.

And now, instead of chasing psychological certitude on your own, you have chosen to place your faith in the teachings of the Magisterium … I’m also curious to know if you see yourself as one who’s finally been given a psychological certitude that never needs to be questioned … It seems like you’re trusting an infallible guide to help you have confidence in the certitude you were looking for all the way at the beginning…

Not quite. And this gets to the “certain advantages” I mentioned in a previous post.

If it were simply a matter of abdicating my personal responsibility for the quest for Truth to another (not-more-reliable) entity – that is, if I chose to believe in something like the Magisterium simply as an article of faith because I was weary of the quest – that would amount to little more than fideism, which some argue is in itself a sin.

One of the great advantages of a teaching authority such as the Magisterium is that it functions independent of any individual. By way of analogy, it is much like open-source software. Linus’s Law asserts that, “Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.” That is, with a large community of experts pouring over every detail, bugs and errors any single individual had failed to see are quickly discovered and fixed. In a sense, then, the Catholic Magisterium is “open-source theology”, which literally billions of Catholic eyeballs have been pouring over for two millennia (give or take a few centuries).

That doesn’t work out to a guarantee of Truth, of course, and I wasn’t nearly so far along as this in my thinking in graduate school. But I had begun to realize that, if any trustworthy guide to Truth did exist (and I didn’t believe in a God who, if he existed, would leave humanity without a way to know it), it must exist independent of any one individual’s psychological certitude.

but it also seems like you’re really down on psychological certitude overall.

Depends. A good Cartesian might argue that ultimately it’s all we have, and on the one hand I’d have to agree. But on the other, relying on subjective certitude as a guide to objective Truth is like having a compass that always points to itself. If I say, “I believe in the Trinity,” and someone asks, “But how do you know you’re correct?” what good does it do to merely reply, “Because I’m certain I’m correct.”?

 

[Tomster]

I certainly understand what you are saying, as I share your concerns and observations about ignoring Tradition.

I have to admit that I’m not a fan of being lumped in with the Calvinist and Anabaptists - it’s the whole reason the LCMS church in America exists. A Calvinist prince was forcing us to merge with the Calvinist church - and murdering us if we refused. In order to remain alive and true to God at the same time, we moved to America in poverty. We’re still a bit testy about that - we lost our Bishops and cathedrals in the process.

We too claim guidance from the Holy Spirit, and as evidenced by recent Popes, we can see the Holy Spirit at work in your church. May we continue in this manor and find ourselves reconciled around the altar rail.

Sounds like a plan, Ben.

 

[Tomster]

But not before the apostles wrote, and what they wrote is what they taught - orally.

that’s not contradictory at all, much less illogical.

There is no other word of God that we know of, at least. And therefore, nothing else that can kind the conscience of the believer.

We’ve spoken often enough for you to know that, in terms of doctrine, Lutherans are bound by scripture, as reflected in the Lutheran Confessions. On these points we have no “right of private judgement”. If I am to be Lutheran, I can’t simply claim, for example, that via my private judgement, that the sacrament is simply sacramental. As far as the CC, what I personally question is whether one patriarch on his own, without councils, without the other patriarchs can determine doctrine and dogma. And that’s not a matter of scripture, but also Sacred Tradition.

And neither is universal jurisdiction (which is also not in the Tradition of the early Church, it seems). Is the pope the Bishop of Rome, and the western patriarch? Absolutely yes.
Fix the schism, Tomster, and Rome’s claim of authority has far more weight.

No. Its not.

Jon

Private judgment is probably your last hurdle, Jon. You’re getting there.

Some weeks ago I had a wonderful conversation with an Orthodox priest. In our discusion the subject of re-union came up. His face lit up as he related to me how very close the Catholic Church and Orthodox Church are as far as full re-union is concerned. As an Orthodox priest he is privy to a lot more inside information than I, as a mere layman, have. He stated that if all goes well we are looking at two to three years for full communion. I just hope he wasn’t overly optimistic.

Afterwards concluding our discussion, we both took the time to pray together. I’m doing my best Jon.

 

[Tomster]

I am sorry I didn’t see this post earlier, Tom.

You are correct that we differ from Lutherans in those areas. While this is a problem for unity, it is not a problem for the authority of Scripture. While disagreements about those issues are important, the unique authority which we both confess the Scriptures to hold is greater than our disunity in a few key points. Not to mention our unity in matters of Christ, justification, the Trinity, et al. Sola scriptura does not make the claim that everyone is going to reach the same conclusions on everything. That has never happened in Christian history.

Quite frankly, you have the same problem with Sacred Tradition as well. Both you and the Orthodox hold to the authority of Tradition as a separate source of revelatory information. Yet your disagreements are just as prevalent as disagreements between Protestants. If those disagreements pose a problem for the authority and sufficiency of Scripture amongst Protestants, then the authority and sufficiency of Tradition is also undercut.

GB,

Try taking a look at it this way.

Suppose that every single Bible on the face of planet Earth disappeared. Gone! What would happen to Protestantism? Seriously.

Suppose that every single Bible on the face of planet Earth disappeared. Gone! What would happen to the Catholic Church? Seriously.

I know and believe that the Catholic Church would continue through history simply because the Catholic Church is Christ’s Mystical Body on earth. The Catholic Church is literally the prolongation of the Incarnation. Christ is our Head. We are His Body. Read St. Paul, 1 Corinthians if you don’t believe me. If every Bible disappeared from the face of planet Earth, we (Catholics) would be infallibly informed by Christ our Head through His Holy Spirit and the Magisterium of the Church (Matthew 16).

Sola Scriptura? Don’t think so!

In regards to our Orthodox brothers and sisters, we are close, very close to full communion.

 

[Chiefsinner]

Don’t you think the denominations of protestants who have completely abolished the apocrypha are trusting on their founding fathers that it was biblical, when there are well over 100 verses from those books quoted in both old and new testaments. People who haven’t read the book come to a vague conclusion.

That’s tradition…

 

[robwar]

Don’t you think the denominations of protestants who have completely abolished the apocrypha are trusting on their founding fathers that it was biblical, when there are well over 100 verses from those books quoted in both old and new testaments. People who haven’t read the book come to a vague conclusion.

That’s tradition…

From what I remember, these Protestant groups claim that there are no quotes from the apocrypha in the other 66 books of the Bible. Likewise, I think there was some issue with the original language in that the apocrypha was not written in Hebrew so they couldn’t be inspired as the other OT books. Likewise, in the early days, didn’t the Jewish Rabbis to distinguish themselves from the Catholic Church change and claim that they weren’t apart of the original inspired cannon. Then a number of them point to St. Jerome in that he originally didn’t want to translate the apocrypha into Latin but did so because the Pope made him. (according to them). I think I read the St. Jerome initially objected but decided to submit to the authority of the Church in obedience. that is different than some nasty old Pope holding a knife to his throat and ordering St. Jerome to do it as they may tell the story.

 

[Nicea325]

Now most protestants say that Catholics follow traditions but aren’t they themselves following traditions for instance,

Lutheran’s are following Luther’s interpretation of the bible
Calvinists following his interpretation of the bible
Ulrich Zwingli, Theodore Beza etc

What are your thoughts?

Of course. We are humans and humans are loaded with traditions. Jesus also followed Jewish traditions. Many people really make a big fuss over traditions.