Catholic Vs Protestant Bible Study

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mijac

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In looking at commentaries from both Catholics and Protestants there are a couple of things which truly stick out like a sore thumb.
  1. There are many times when looking over a variety of Protestant commentaries where one can find a particular commentary at any given moment for a given subject which backs up Catholic teaching. This will very from topic to topic as far as which Protestant commentary will end up agreeing with the Catholic teaching. When they do agree they will cite some of the same passages as the Catholic Church states supports a given teaching.
  2. This speaks to the idea of numerous interpretations
  3. This speaks of the idea of interpretations are often based on the color of the lenses which one looks at Scripture, of ones personal filter system in determining what one believes to be true.
  4. This speaks to the idea of the impossibility from a Protestant perspective of being sure what is true and what is not true based on Bible alone
  5. There is one thing all of the below Catholic Commentaries have in common. They all quote quite frequently church Fathers commentary on given passages. All of the Catholic commentaries are loaded with Church Fathers quotes for given passages.
  6. Most all of the time for most all of the Protestants commentaries for all practical purposes ignore the Church Fathers. They almost never quote any Church father whatsoever.
  7. This portrays the idea of blind ignorance toward the church fathers
  8. This leads toward the idea of being Incredulous
  9. To ignore all of the church fathers, to presuppose that one somehow has greater understanding 1500 to 2000 years after the Scripture was completed than any of those church fathers at least on verge of supreme arrogance and pride.
  10. St Thomas’ says it best in “Catena aura” Latin meaning The Golden Chain (the links between the Apostles and the church) A compilation of Church fathers commentary on the Gospels
The Catholic Church is the most attacked church both from within the church and from outside of the church. It reminds me of Christ’s words
John 15:20 ….If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you.

Many Protestants will say that Catholics do not know their Bible, do not believe in Bible studies. Some will go so far as to say that the Church does not allow, or discourages Bible study. While the idea of Catholics not reading and studying the Bible is true to a certain extent for a certain number of people and at certain times. It is also blatantly false. One can not make such total absolute generalizations without it becoming absolute foolishness.

Many Protestants do not study the Bible themselves. Their are any number of magisterial documents which the Catholic church down through the centuries particularly since the Protestant Schism has put out to encourage Bible reading and study. In fact the whole idea of Scripture reading and study goes all the way back to the early Church fathers. “Ignorance of scripture is ignorance of Christ”-- St. Jerome . St. Augustine said that" the person, who is ignorant of any one of the testaments of the Catholic Holy Bible hobbles to Christ on one foot".

When I first started looking at and studying both sides of the fence I found many Protestant Commentaries. Initially I was only aware of Two Catholic Commentaries on Holy Scripture, one excellent one was the Navarre Bible Study, and another was Ignatius Bible study which was no where near complete. Both were recent and neither was available for computer software program. I would later discover that there were a number of solid commentaries for Catholic Bible study published over the last few centuries. There is for Catholics "A Catholic Commentary On Holy Scripture by Father Bernard Orchard. There is the Haydock commentary by Father George Haydock 1859. There is The Great BIBLICAL COMMENTARY OF CORNELIUS À LAPIDE a multi volume work covering the entire OT and NT except the book of Job. Praised by Protestants and Catholics for its great scholarly work. Then there is St Thomas’ Catena aura (The Golden Chain n (the links between the Apostles and the church) A compilation of Church fathers commentary on the Gospels. This all flies in the face of the idea that the Catholic Church suppressed Bible reading and Bible study.

Protestant commentaries commonly available since the 1500 Schism

Albert Barnes Notes (1798-1870),

Adam Clarke’s Commentary on the Bible (1715-1832)

Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible (1662 - 1714)

1599 Geneva Bible Translation Notes

John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible (1690-1771)

WORD PICTURES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT by Archibald Thomas Robertson

Vincent’s Word Studies by Marvin R. Vincent, D.D.

Synopsis of the Old and New Testaments John Nelson Darby (1800 - 1882)

A Commentary on the Old and New Testaments by Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset and David Brown

John Wesley’s Explanatory Notes on the Whole Bible

Wuest’s Word Studies

For a Good Catholic Bible and Catechetical study software program completly free check out
esnips.com/web/CatholicApolegetics
 
Mijac
You wrote:
One can not make such total absolute generalizations without it becoming absolute foolishness.
Click to expand...
I am afraid that I consider in your post you make total absolute generalizations.

You mention that Protestants ignore the Church Fathers. This is understandable on several counts. They believe in Sola Scriptura, hence they do not need the Fathers.

Also as their Churches were only formed fairly recemtly, it is obvious they would not consider in detail scholars who wrote before their Churches were established.

However many of the foremost patristic scholars are not Catholic.
 
Thanks for the great websites you posted, esnips is terrific! Oh, and by the way, I have seen some protestant books concerning the Church Fathers, where they try to reappropriate them as they do Augustine. I have even seen one book where they try to use quotes from the Fathers in an attempt to disprove our Marian Dogmas. It upset me terribly at the time, and then some friends in my prayer group gave me some tapes by Tim Staples on Mary, which was infinitely helpful! And Mr. Fitz, what is your motto in English? It is on the tip of my brain… :angel1:
 
NoelFitz said:
Mijac
You wrote:
You mention that Protestants ignore the Church Fathers. This is understandable on several counts. They believe in Sola Scriptura, hence they do not need the Fathers.
Click to expand...
Yes you make my points, solo Scripture results in multiple interpretations, who can know which doctrine is true and which is false when you have two contradictory views, some teach yes to baptism as a sacrament, some say it is just a ordincance, some teach once saved alwasys saved, some say not true and the lists of contradictions go on and on based on Bible alone. As I did say there is a sense of arrogance to reach a conclusion that 1500 to 2000 years after the time of the apostles, that one knows more and understands better what was meant and taught in the Bible than those who were even trained by the Apostles or those first few generations or those first couple of centuries after the Apostles. Only Pride can draw this conclusion. Its like a child when young thinks his parents are the smartest people on earth. Then they hit their teens and somehow theirs parents begin to look like the dumbest people on earth. The teen now believes he knows more and understands more than all the years of knowledge his parents had lived, they are just dumb. Somewhere in their 20s to 30s they realize their parents were not so dumb after all. the same is true for all of the Protestant commentaries in believing they know more than all those church fathers…
NoelFitz said:
Also as their Churches were only formed fairly recemtly, it is obvious they would not consider in detail scholars who wrote before their Churches were established.

However many of the foremost patristic scholars are not Catholic.
Click to expand...
Can you name me a church father who was not Catholic other than tertullian who abandoned the Church for a while but definately was not Protestant in his theology???
 
One great question to ask protestants is if sola scriptura is a true doctrine, then why are there footnotes and commentaries in the protestant bible? Seems like the scripture alone should be sufficient to understand the meaning.
 
mijac.

Was it Oscar Wilde who considered his parents knew nothing when he was 17? By the time he was 21 he realized they knew a lot. He was amazed how much they learned in a few years.

Sola Scriptura needs not lead to many differenct beliefs. Often the Bible is clear and unamiguous. No Protestant believes Jesus is NOT Lord.

Even with tradition and the magisterium Catholics disasgree, as can be seen in CA,

Origen may be considered a Church Father.

Origen (Greek: Ὠριγένης Ōrigénēs, or Origen Adamantius, ca. 185–ca. 254) was an early Christian scholar, theologian, and one of the most distinguished of the early fathers of the Christian Church. According to tradition, he is held to have been an Egyptian[1] who taught in Alexandria, reviving the Catechetical School of Alexandria where Clement of Alexandria had taught. The patriarch of Alexandria at first supported Origen but later expelled him for being ordained without the patriarch’s permission. He relocated to Caesarea Maritima and died there[2] after being tortured during a persecution. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origen

There used to be the insistence that Catholic Bibles had footnotes, but Protestant Bibles did not need the same constraint,
 
mijac said:
Welcome mijac!!!

I love your post!!!

I left the Catholic Church when I was a teenager because of my love for the Scriptures. Seemed the only people my age who actually read the Bible were the protestant evangelicals.

After nearly 20 yrs of study, and being in solid Bible-teaching churches, I approached my pastor. He is a nationally syndicated radio preacher.
**
After service one day I asked him the million dollar question.

"Which Bible commentary and which “Systematic Theology” should I get, so I know my understanding of all the Scriptures are ‘correct?’**

(I had no idea that the only correct answer to that is the Catholic Church.)

He looked at me and laughed his signature laugh. I was serious. I wanted to know. He basically said that he picks and chooses what he agrees with from several different sources.

Okay,…:rolleyes: that works for him, but not for me. **That would basically make him THE POPE. **

Well, what happens after the pastor dies? What then? Who is to lead the thousands of families who look to him for their guidance in all interpretation of Scripture?

"I am writing these instructions to you so that, if I am delayed, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth."
1 Timothy 3:14-15

Within a year I had made my way back to the RCC Church, via a few months visiting different Eastern Orthodoxy Churches, but I did find my way all the way back to Rome. 👍
Click to expand...
 
G&G

Thank you for an inspiring post.

You wrote:
"Which Bible commentary and which “Systematic Theology” should I get, so I know my understanding of all the Scriptures are ‘correct?’
Click to expand...
Which did you eventually get?
 
graceandglory said:
I found this thoughtful piece on a blog at crossing the tiber.

“Everyone has a Magisterium”

crossed-the-tiber.blogspot.com/2006/09/everybody-submits-to-magisterium.html

This pretty much sums up my own experience as an evangelical.
Click to expand...
The quote below from your blog hits the mark:
Now, when a Catholic says they subscribe to the teaching authority of the Catholic Church called the Magisterium, the non-catholic says, “I get my teaching from the Word of God and need no authority to tell me how to interpret God’s Word.” Yet in every Independent Bible-Only Church every Sunday, the faithful accept the “Teaching Magisterium” of “Pastor Jim” or “Pastor Mike” or in my case “Pastor Eddie.”
Click to expand...
 
mark_a said:
The quote below from your blog hits the mark:
Click to expand...
It’s not my blog. Sorry if my wording made you think so. It still comes awfully close to my story. Only for me, it was Pastor Bill. 😉
 
NoelFitz said:
G&G

Thank you for an inspiring post.

You wrote:

Which did you eventually get?
Click to expand...
I got the whole enchilada. 😉 I got the Catholic Church and the whole Magisterium!!! I got the Catechism of the Catholic Church! I got canon law and the Church Fathers, and all the Saints! I got the results from all the Church councils! It’s a pretty good deal.

Another really good thing: The Catholic Church doesn’t charge for these things. No one’s out to make a buck. All of these resources are free of charge on the internet. 👍
 
graceandglory said:
mijac;4033470:
Welcome mijac!!!

I love your post!!!

I left the Catholic Church when I was a teenager because of my love for the Scriptures. Seemed the only people my age who actually read the Bible were the protestant evangelicals.

After nearly 20 yrs of study, and being in solid Bible-teaching churches, I approached my pastor. He is a nationally syndicated radio preacher.
**
After service one day I asked him the million dollar question.

"Which Bible commentary and which “Systematic Theology” should I get, so I know my understanding of all the Scriptures are ‘correct?’**
Click to expand...
(I had no idea that the only correct answer to that is the Catholic Church.)

He looked at me and laughed his signature laugh. I was serious. I wanted to know. He basically said that he picks and chooses what he agrees with from several different sources.

Okay,…:rolleyes: that works for him, but not for me. **That would basically make him THE POPE. **

Well, what happens after the pastor dies? What then? Who is to lead the thousands of families who look to him for their guidance in all interpretation of Scripture?

"I am writing these instructions to you so that, if I am delayed, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth."
1 Timothy 3:14-15

Within a year I had made my way back to the RCC Church, via a few months visiting different Eastern Orthodoxy Churches, but I did find my way all the way back to Rome. 👍

You know You loved the post, I appreciate very much the fact that you put a face–real life situation to what I described as the difference between Catholic and Protestant Bible study, one based on an entire history of teaching from the get go which has taught the same things each and every century to one that ignores the history, ignores wisdom from the beginning of the church and devlops its own set of standards/doctrines which vary from commentary to commentary, from denomination to denomination constantly offering contradictory views, who can know truth then…???
Click to expand...
 
graceandglory said:
mijac;4033470:
Welcome mijac!!!

I love your post!!!

I left the Catholic Church when I was a teenager because of my love for the Scriptures. Seemed the only people my age who actually read the Bible were the protestant evangelicals.

After nearly 20 yrs of study, and being in solid Bible-teaching churches, I approached my pastor. He is a nationally syndicated radio preacher.
**
After service one day I asked him the million dollar question.

"Which Bible commentary and which “Systematic Theology” should I get, so I know my understanding of all the Scriptures are ‘correct?’**
Click to expand...
(I had no idea that the only correct answer to that is the Catholic Church.)

He looked at me and laughed his signature laugh. I was serious. I wanted to know. He basically said that he picks and chooses what he agrees with from several different sources.

Okay,…:rolleyes: that works for him, but not for me. **That would basically make him THE POPE. **

Well, what happens after the pastor dies? What then? Who is to lead the thousands of families who look to him for their guidance in all interpretation of Scripture?

"I am writing these instructions to you so that, if I am delayed, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth."
1 Timothy 3:14-15

Within a year I had made my way back to the RCC Church, via a few months visiting different Eastern Orthodoxy Churches, but I did find my way all the way back to Rome. 👍

I don’t know if you have visited the Catholic Site with Catholic Bible commentaries and numerous other catholic resources for a free download of a Catholic bible and Catchetical software study program at
From: esnips.com/web/CatholicApolegetics

I would like to put up as a topical module for Catholic VS Protestant Bible study what I have loaded here and I would like to add immediately following that your post along with the other on everyone has a magisterium with your permission
Click to expand...
 
mijac said:
In looking at commentaries from both Catholics and Protestants there are a couple of things which truly stick out like a sore thumb.
  1. There are many times when looking over a variety of Protestant commentaries where one can find a particular commentary at any given moment for a given subject which backs up Catholic teaching. This will very from topic to topic as far as which Protestant commentary will end up agreeing with the Catholic teaching. When they do agree they will cite some of the same passages as the Catholic Church states supports a given teaching.
  2. This speaks to the idea of numerous interpretations
  3. This speaks of the idea of interpretations are often based on the color of the lenses which one looks at Scripture, of ones personal filter system in determining what one believes to be true.
  4. This speaks to the idea of the impossibility from a Protestant perspective of being sure what is true and what is not true based on Bible alone
  5. There is one thing all of the below Catholic Commentaries have in common. They all quote quite frequently church Fathers commentary on given passages. All of the Catholic commentaries are loaded with Church Fathers quotes for given passages.
  6. Most all of the time for most all of the Protestants commentaries for all practical purposes ignore the Church Fathers. They almost never quote any Church father whatsoever.
  7. This portrays the idea of blind ignorance toward the church fathers
  8. This leads toward the idea of being Incredulous
  9. To ignore all of the church fathers, to presuppose that one somehow has greater understanding 1500 to 2000 years after the Scripture was completed than any of those church fathers at least on verge of supreme arrogance and pride.
  10. St Thomas’ says it best in “Catena aura” Latin meaning The Golden Chain (the links between the Apostles and the church) A compilation of Church fathers commentary on the Gospels
The Catholic Church is the most attacked church both from within the church and from outside of the church. It reminds me of Christ’s words
John 15:20 ….If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you.

Many Protestants will say that Catholics do not know their Bible, do not believe in Bible studies. Some will go so far as to say that the Church does not allow, or discourages Bible study. While the idea of Catholics not reading and studying the Bible is true to a certain extent for a certain number of people and at certain times. It is also blatantly false. One can not make such total absolute generalizations without it becoming absolute foolishness.

Many Protestants do not study the Bible themselves. Their are any number of magisterial documents which the Catholic church down through the centuries particularly since the Protestant Schism has put out to encourage Bible reading and study. In fact the whole idea of Scripture reading and study goes all the way back to the early Church fathers. “Ignorance of scripture is ignorance of Christ”-- St. Jerome . St. Augustine said that" the person, who is ignorant of any one of the testaments of the Catholic Holy Bible hobbles to Christ on one foot".

When I first started looking at and studying both sides of the fence I found many Protestant Commentaries. Initially I was only aware of Two Catholic Commentaries on Holy Scripture, one excellent one was the Navarre Bible Study, and another was Ignatius Bible study which was no where near complete. Both were recent and neither was available for computer software program. I would later discover that there were a number of solid commentaries for Catholic Bible study published over the last few centuries. There is for Catholics "A Catholic Commentary On Holy Scripture by Father Bernard Orchard. There is the Haydock commentary by Father George Haydock 1859. There is The Great BIBLICAL COMMENTARY OF CORNELIUS À LAPIDE a multi volume work covering the entire OT and NT except the book of Job. Praised by Protestants and Catholics for its great scholarly work. Then there is St Thomas’ Catena aura (The Golden Chain n (the links between the Apostles and the church) A compilation of Church fathers commentary on the Gospels. This all flies in the face of the idea that the Catholic Church suppressed Bible reading and Bible study.

Protestant commentaries commonly available since the 1500 Schism

Albert Barnes Notes (1798-1870),

Adam Clarke’s Commentary on the Bible (1715-1832)

Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible (1662 - 1714)

1599 Geneva Bible Translation Notes

John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible (1690-1771)

WORD PICTURES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT by Archibald Thomas Robertson

Vincent’s Word Studies by Marvin R. Vincent, D.D.

Synopsis of the Old and New Testaments John Nelson Darby (1800 - 1882)

A Commentary on the Old and New Testaments by Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset and David Brown

John Wesley’s Explanatory Notes on the Whole Bible

Wuest’s Word Studies

For a Good Catholic Bible and Catechetical study software program completly free check out
esnips.com/web/CatholicApolegetics
Click to expand...
It’s sort of a lost cause. Protestants will always read the Bible as if it were an instructional field manual or religious textbook, written by one author, from start to finish, cover-to-cover. They don’t care about historical context or literary tradition or critical thinking when studying it. They simply pick it up, start reading, and believe everything it says, quite literally. They’re actually *opposed *to an intellectual approach to the Bible. No amount of Catholic explanation will ever change their minds.
 
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