Bible Question

[JTBT]

I do not hold the reformers to any standard at all. By what whim did they decide the canon needed to be revised?
the Roman Catholic canon was not dogmatically canonized until the Council of Trent, there was debate on the matter of the Apocryphal books and provincial councils up to the reformation. but the reformers chose the books that were not debated. which goes back to one of my earlier post.

mercygate:

The difference between “the Holy Spirit and me” and “the Holy Spirit and the Church and me” is that the Church HAS the authority to determine such matters. why do you think that only the Roman Catholic Church has that authoirty.
mercygate;3749190:

The canon was decided according to pretty unexceptional criteria: Authorship by an apostle or someone close to an apostle,

this doesn’t really apply the Apocryphal books b/c we are dealing with the OT.

There is a lot more to trust in “the Holy Spirit and the Church and me” than in any one individual’s personal confidence that the Holy Spirit is giving them a private revelation apart from the Body of Christ. Particularly with something like this because the Scripture is a public witness and voice.

this statement tells me that you do not understand the doctirne of sola scriptura; it’s not about private revelation, this is a topic that has been beat to death on other threads, and still the Catholics on this fourm don’t understand what it is. it would be good if I could see a Catholic actually try to refute sola scriptura and not the strawman of “me and my Bible”

 

[JTBT]

No one is saved without in some way being linked to Jesus through The Catholic Church.
James

way off topic here but I have to say this. No one is saved without in some way being linked to Jesus who is the head of the Church period.
as far as your other comments I will not get into a mud slinging contest with you.

 

[mercygate]

the Roman Catholic canon was not dogmatically canonized until the Council of Trent, there was debate on the matter of the Apocryphal books and provincial councils up to the reformation. but the reformers chose the books that were not debated. which goes back to one of my earlier post.The the Bible was “dogmatically” canonized as a way of permanently closing a discussion that had not been open for a thousand years.

why do you think that only the Roman Catholic Church has that authoirty.

Because the Catholic Church has the scriptural warrant from Christ Himself, because the Catholic Church has the unbroken history demonstrating it to BE the Church Christ promised to build upon Peter and the apostles, because the Catholic Church has the paper trail demonstrating doctrinal continuity with the Church of the Apostolic age.

this doesn’t really apply the Apocryphal books b/c we are dealing with the OT.True.

this statement tells me that you do not understand the doctirne of sola scriptura; it’s not about private revelation, this is a topic that has been beat to death on other threads, and still the Catholics on this fourm don’t understand what it is. it would be good if I could see a Catholic actually try to refute sola scriptura and not the strawman of “me and my Bible”

I wasn’t thinking of sola Scriptura. I think you had asked the question of how trusting the Holy Spirit to guide the Church “into all the truth” was different from your claim that your prayer to the Holy Spirit to reveal the truth of Scripture to you is somehow equally trustworthy. Nobody denies that the Holy Spirit guides individuals who seek the Lord with integrity. What we say is that when “I” am “guided” into a “truth” that contradicts the teaching of the Church, one of us has to be wrong, and it ain’t gonna be Christ’s Church. My own experience is rife with examples of my own delirium.

 

[CentralFLJames]

way off topic here but I have to say this. No one is saved without in some way being linked to Jesus who is the head of the Church period.
as far as your other comments I will not get into a mud slinging contest with you.

There was no mud thrown - just tough questions and understandably things you don’t care to address. It really does not matter though that you are ducking the hard questions since faith is not a matter of logic anyway. It’s hard to appeal to reason when a person’s mind is closed. Most people lack the objective wherewithal to get past their own emotions to reason past their own early teachings and traditions that shaped their identities. It’s very hard to “undo” bad teaching since it forms their core identity. The natural instinct is to defend one’s own perspective and identity - no matter how blatantly contradictory it is when held up to scrutiny.

But I must say your parting statement tries to seperate Jesus from His Church or subordinate the Church as not essential to salvation. That is both impossible and unbiblical. I’ll say it again “The household of God, which is the Church of the living God, is the pillar and bulwark of the truth. [1 Tim. 3:15]”

If you can ever emotionally get past your protestant social conditioning and traditions you we see that where Catholics really differ with you is on what constitutes “The Church”. Catholics hold that There is only One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. There are no branches that are legitimate and in full communion. These others, including Protestantism, come from The Catholic Church, “The Church”. These others lack the full revelation of truth and the sacramental channels of grace necessary to insure salvation. These others are gravely disordered and deficient and at exceptionally high risk of leading others astray from their salvation.

**One can not come to Jesus without coming in through the narrow front door (the gate) of His Church and being obedient to His representatives on earth. PERIOD. **

John 10:1
“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter by the door into the fold of the sheep, but climbs up some other way, he is a thief and a robber.

Matthew 7:13
Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it.

1 Timothy 3:15
I write so that you will know how one ought to conduct himself in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and support of the truth.

James

 

[JTBT]

The the Bible was “dogmatically” canonized as a way of permanently closing a discussion that had not been open for a thousand years.

if that were true the Orthodox Bible would be exactly the same as the Roman Bible.

I wasn’t thinking of sola Scriptura. I think you had asked the question of how trusting the Holy Spirit to guide the Church “into all the truth” was different from your claim that your prayer to the Holy Spirit to reveal the truth of Scripture to you is somehow equally trustworthy. Nobody denies that the Holy Spirit guides individuals who seek the Lord with integrity. What we say is that when “I” am “guided” into a “truth” that contradicts the teaching of the Church, one of us has to be wrong, and it ain’t gonna be Christ’s Church. My own experience is rife with examples of my own delirium.

sorry I thought that was what you were refering to, but do you think someone can truly be guided by the Holy Spirit and come to something that is not true?

as far as the OP goes though I think we agree that it is up to the individual to choose a good Bible.

 

[mercygate]

sorry I thought that was what you were refering to, but do you think someone can truly be guided by the Holy Spirit and come to something that is not true?

Of course not. But many of us think we are receiving wonderful communications of grace when, in fact, we are responding to last night’s sauerkraut. We are to “test the spirit” and when our insight runs contrary to the full sense of Scripture and to the deposit of faith, then Scripture and the Teaching clearly carry more weight. That’s a no-brainer. History is full of people who think they see something that the Church has missed, or who receive private communications that run contrary to the faith, or who simply read the Bible in isolation from the Tradition and come up with things like the JW distraction.

 

[CentralFLJames]

sorry I thought that was what you were refering to, but do you think someone can truly be guided by the Holy Spirit and come to something that is not true?

Uh oh - he used the “truly” word. We Catholics have to smile and grimace every time a Protestant uses this word. It comes up a lot in phrases such as “truly saved”, “truly believe” etc. when we challenge Protestants to defend how people can be saved while they commit grave sins and clutch on to the erroneous theological doctrine of “once saved always saved”.

Your question really begs the greater question - "does anyone really think the same Holy Spirit that gave us the Catholic Church and the Holy Bible also gave us the 32,000 or so seperate and competing Protestant sects that come along 1500 years later? Does anyone TRULY believe that?

I don’t think so…

As to the OP, clearly, it was Luther, not the Holy Spirit that pulled out a tithe of scripture (7 books) from The Bible and completely falsified key NT verse translations to support a whole new theological doctrine and fabrication of man. And it was Luther too who opened the door wide to secularization of the faith by becoming a stooge and playing right into the Zeitgeist of the day. That was the monarch’s desire to have the church subservient to the state rather than to the person they could not control - Christ’s Vicar (the pope). The state had already feathered the nest through Simony of the religious rank and file with their sons and princes etc. It was just a matter of opportune time. Luther saw some legitimate abuses but played right into it and became the very instrument that gave the crown the thing they wanted - control.

The irony is that the monarchs then bought loyalty from the masses by printing KJVs and giving them away to their loyal subjects to give the impression of benevolence as well as ecclesiastical authority. They did not trust Rome to let them rule as they wanted with impunity. If they could not control Rome they would control the teaching and usurp Rome’s authority by pandering to the class demogogary of the time in exchange for power.

The whole sola scriptura thing was a ruse to disempower the teaching authority of the Catholic Church and to secularize the religion so it could be dominated by state government rather than the Vatican. As long as the new class of spiritualized serfs labored, followed the good and lawful order of Christian moral code and paid their taxes to the crown (and tithed in the secular churches to the new men of the cloth living on that wage) the system worked.

Now that everyone has caught on to the fact that anyone with a bible can incorporate as a non-profit church under protestantism all can go start their own church and get tax free not for profit status for their new family business. In the limit, Protestantism makes everyone in the pews their own private church of “True” believers. Of course each one thinks their variant is the “True” Church. But once everyone starts selling religion tax free and the state loses its vig the current relative state benevolence will collapse or privileges status will be revoked. Protestantism will self destruct into a billion shards of irrelevance - then there will be a price to pay for all Christianity when the chaos and social order collapses in the wake ot it. That’s when the real persecution ensues.

James

 

[JTBT]

Of course not. But many of us think we are receiving wonderful communications of grace when, in fact, we are responding to last night’s sauerkraut. We are to “test the spirit” and when our insight runs contrary to the full sense of Scripture and to the deposit of faith, then Scripture and the Teaching clearly carry more weight. That’s a no-brainer. History is full of people who think they see something that the Church has missed, or who receive private communications that run contrary to the faith, or who simply read the Bible in isolation from the Tradition and come up with things like the JW distraction.

Protestants do just that, there are a ton of Protestant or Reformed apologist that make the case against the JW and the LDS, and we use the Bible as the final authority. It is because both the JW and LDS claim authority outside of the Bible that many get trapped in them.

 

[JTBT]

Uh oh - he used the “truly” word. We Catholics have to smile and grimace every time a Protestant uses this word. It comes up a lot in phrases such as “truly saved”, “truly believe” etc. when we challenge Protestants to defend how people can be saved while they commit grave sins and clutch on to the erroneous theological doctrine of “once saved always saved”.

Your question really begs the greater question - "does anyone really think the same Holy Spirit that gave us the Catholic Church and the Holy Bible also gave us the 32,000 or so seperate and competing Protestant sects that come along 1500 years later? Does anyone TRULY believe that?

I don’t think so…

As to the OP, clearly, it was Luther, not the Holy Spirit that pulled out a tithe of scripture (7 books) from The Bible and completely falsified key NT verse translations to support a whole new theological doctrine and fabrication of man. And it was Luther too who opened the door wide to secularization of the faith by becoming a stooge and playing right into the Zeitgeist of the day. That was the monarch’s desire to have the church subservient to the state rather than to the person they could not control - Christ’s Vicar (the pope). The state had already feathered the nest through Simony of the religious rank and file with their sons and princes etc. It was just a matter of opportune time. Luther saw some legitimate abuses but played right into it and became the very instrument that gave the crown the thing they wanted - control.

The irony is that the monarchs then bought loyalty from the masses by printing KJVs and giving them away to their loyal subjects to give the impression of benevolence as well as ecclesiastical authority. They did not trust Rome to let them rule as they wanted with impunity. If they could not control Rome they would control the teaching and usurp Rome’s authority by pandering to the class demogogary of the time in exchange for power.

The whole sola scriptura thing was a ruse to disempower the teaching authority of the Catholic Church and to secularize the religion so it could be dominated by state government rather than the Vatican. As long as the new class of spiritualized serfs labored, followed the good and lawful order of Christian moral code and paid their taxes to the crown (and tithed in the secular churches to the new men of the cloth living on that wage) the system worked.

Now that everyone has caught on to the fact that anyone with a bible can incorporate as a non-profit church under protestantism all can go start their own church and get tax free not for profit status for their new family business. In the limit, Protestantism makes everyone in the pews their own private church of “True” believers. Of course each one thinks their variant is the “True” Church. But once everyone starts selling religion tax free and the state loses its vig the current relative state benevolence will collapse or privileges status will be revoked. Protestantism will self destruct into a billion shards of irrelevance - then there will be a price to pay for all Christianity when the chaos and social order collapses in the wake ot it. That’s when the real persecution ensues.

James

What a rant, and just full of misinformation. ex. *32,000 * where on earth did you come up with that number, I doubt you can back that up.

 

[mercygate]

Protestants do just that, there are a ton of Protestant or Reformed apologist that make the case against the JW and the LDS, and we use the Bible as the final authority. It is because both the JW and LDS claim authority outside of the Bible that many get trapped in them.

Do the JW claim authority outside the Bible as the LDS do? Aside from the top-down governance from Brooklyn, the ones who come to my door claim the Bible as the only thing they rely on.

I would quibble that fine Protestant apologists who calmly make their very strong cases against the theology of the JW and LDS tend to lean heavily on the early Councils when defending the Christian position “from Scrpture.” I am thinking particularly of the work done by the Christian Research Institute.

 

[JTBT]

Do the JW claim authority outside the Bible as the LDS do? Aside from the top-down governance from Brooklyn, the ones who come to my door claim the Bible as the only thing they rely on.

Yes because JW say that they cannot translate the Bible without the help of the watchtower publications which elevates the watchtower to a position of authority above the Bible.

LDS believe in 3 other holy scriptures which they place with the Bible, they also believe in a modern day Prophet who speaks for God on earth and can change the core beliefs of the system, i.e. Polygamy is no longer practiced by the LDS, but was once deemed necessary for salvation.

I would quibble that fine Protestant apologists who calmly make their very strong cases against the theology of the JW and LDS tend to lean heavily on the early Councils when defending the Christian position “from Scrpture.” I am thinking particularly of the work done by the Christian Research Institute.

of course they do, and that was my point regarding sola scriptura, Protestants have not abandoned historical interpretation, we just hold the Bible to be the Apostolic Authority.

 

[CentralFLJames]

What a rant, and just full of misinformation. ex. *32,000 * where on earth did you come up with that number, I doubt you can back that up.

Protestantism

There are “over 33,000 denominations in 238 countries” and every year there is a net increase of around 270 to 300 denominations.[5] According to David Barrett’s study (1970), there are 8,196 denominations within Protestantism.

World Christian Encyclopedia: A Comparative Survey of Churches and Religions in The Modern World 2 Volume Set (Hardcover)

You can contradict the method or the categories but you can’t contradict the trend that Protestantism is in free-fall now with 10’s of thousands of seperate cults like a snowball rolling down hill and spinning off new offshoots monthly to accommodate every new fringe private interpretation or desire that is out there.

James

 

[JTBT]

Protestantism

I guess that Is the infallible Wikipedia teaching?

 

[clmowry]

What a rant, and just full of misinformation. ex. *32,000 *where on earth did you come up with that number, I doubt you can back that up.

Yeah this number can be thoroughly backed up.

You’ll find many a thread on the subject if you search for it here on the forums.

I believe you will find that the fellow who compiles the data is not a Catholic either.

Chuck

 

[JTBT]

Yeah this number can be thoroughly backed up.

You’ll find many a thread on the subject if you search for it here on the forums.

I believe you will find that the fellow who compiles the data is not a Catholic either.

Chuck

who compiles the data?

 

[clmowry]

who compiles the data?

The source is World Christian Encyclopedia by Barrett, Kurian, Johnson (Oxford Univ Press, 2nd edition, 2001).

BTW, I’m one of the folks that thinks the “real” number is more like 6,000 than 32,000 because I don’t agree with the segmentation scheme that is used to define a “denomination.” i.e. I think each Catholic Dioses is listed as a separate denomination.

Chuck

 

[JTBT]

I’ll see if I can find it.

BTW, I’m one of the folks that thinks the “real” number is more like 6,000 than 32,000 because I don’t agree with the “by country” segmentation scheme that is used to define a “denomination.” i.e. “Catholic” in the USA would count as 1. “Catholic” in Italy would be another 1.

Chuck

I don’t buy 6,000.
as far as Protestant movements go there is
Lutherns, Calivinist, and AnaBaptist about all of the Protestant Churches come from one of traditions and agree on core doctirnes ex the “5 solas”.

 

[clmowry]

I don’t buy 6,000.
as far as Protestant movements go there is
Lutherns, Calivinist, and AnaBaptist about all of the Protestant Churches come from one of traditions and agree on core doctirnes ex the “5 solas”.

bringyou.to/apologetics/a120.htm

This link gets into the data a bit.

The definition of “denomination” used is as follows:

“an organized Christian Church or tradition or religious group or community of believers or aggregate of worship centers or congregations, usually within a specific country, whose component congregations and members are called by the same name in different areas, regarding themselves as an autonomous Christian church distinct from other denominations, churches and traditions.”

Where the number grows dramatically is with all of the independent “non-Denominational” Churches. i.e. Each Church counts as 1.

I think if you look at the various groupings and counted all of the “non-Denominational” churches as 1 group then you still end up with something like 600 in the united states.

Chuck

 

[JTBT]

The source is World Christian Encyclopedia by Barrett, Kurian, Johnson (Oxford Univ Press, 2nd edition, 2001).

BTW, I’m one of the folks that thinks the “real” number is more like 6,000 than 32,000 because I don’t agree with the segmentation scheme that is used to define a “denomination.” i.e. I think each Catholic Dioses is listed as a separate denomination.

Chuck

well you seem to have noticed what I did, if you go by this study, Roman Catholics have their own denominations. but as I said you seem to have already seen that.

 

[JTBT]

bringyou.to/apologetics/a120.htm

This link gets into the data a bit.

The definition of “denomination” used is as follows:

“an organized Christian Church or tradition or religious group or community of believers or aggregate of worship centers or congregations, usually within a specific country, whose component congregations and members are called by the same name in different areas, regarding themselves as an autonomous Christian church distinct from other denominations, churches and traditions.”

Where the number grows dramatically is with all of the independent “non-Denominational” Churches. i.e. Each Church counts as 1.

I think if you look at the various groupings and counted all of the “non-Denominational” churches as 1 group then you still end up with something like 600 in the united states.

Chuck

600 if you included Roman Catholics and Orthodox Catholics, then you separated the Protestants groups in the same way. but this data seem only useful for propaganda Protestants are not nearly as divided as Roman Catholics (in general) make it sound.