Do modern Protestants know what they are protesting?

[steve_b]

What about the ordinary magisterium? Also infallible?

Yes when they are with the pope on an issue of faith and morals.
D:

What about the (relatively new) category of “definitive teaching”? Also infallible?

You mean when that word was used in the quote I gave?

“Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church’s divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.”

The word as you can see is not alone. The entire quote has all the parts to it that define an infallible statement.
D:

Again, statements are deemed either correct or incorrect. People are either fallible or infallible. To claim that a statement is infallible is illogical–words don’t have agency or the capacity to err (or “words don’t sin” if that helps make the point more clearly) in themselves. The potential for making a moral or logical mistake occurs within human beings.

You’re not considering key points

• there have been 267 successors to St Peter in the last 1,946 years. I think you will agree, It has NOT been a heavily populated office. So it’s not insurmountable to go back and look at each office holder.
• As an individual, the pope can err. He can make all kinds of mistakes. There have been scoundrals in the office. Fortunately only a few. And The Church has never said otherwise.
• The definition on infallibility, shows when and how a pope is infallible. It’s a charism that doesn’t come from him. People who argue against the doctrine actually attack a strawman. Infallibility comes from Jesus and His promise to Peter. Therefore Jesus is who protects the teaching from error. Look again at the Vatican definition I quoted. #[507 (http://forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=12364743&postcount=507)

 

[FathersKnowBest]

I guess maybe I don’t understand the issue then. Do I think the Pope can make correct statements? Sure, of course. Do I think the Pope has the capacity to make incorrect statements concerning faith and morals? Of course. He’s human.

And we’d all agree.

However, when making pronouncements on the issues of faith or morals, intended to bind the whole Church for all time, he is protected by Christ’s promises from making erroneous statements.

The way you stated the issue above indicates that you don’t understand or you don’t wish to discuss the issue in the context of the Catholic definition of papal infallibility.

 

[clem456]

All “De Fide” statements/declarations are to be held by the faithful. It doesn’t matter if they are declared infallible or not.

As an insider, I see it the same way. I don’t care if what SJPII said is infallible or not. It holds authority and I am to assent and not give it my personal spin or take.

What is really exacerbating for me is the absence of a Church declaration about what declarations are infallible. Because all it leaves is a whole bunch of Catholics running around stamping infallibility on whatever they think fits the definition.

Is it better to have “de fide” or to have a long list of cut and dried statements? (We have both).
Catholics and Protestants both use the absence of infallible declarations as negative proof to relieve themselves of the call to faith.
This thread is exhibit #1 of that.

 

[JonNC]

I have a different take on it…obviously

• Re: corruption in the Church, let’s not forget Luther himself, he was no saint. He was given a chance to correct his errors but wouldn’t. So he piled error on top of error, was given warnings by the Church and after 9 months of no answer from Luther, he was excommunicated, as were all his followers…Re: infallibility, that is his attempt to discredit the authority of the Church getting matters right, on faith and morals when that charism is employed. But one has to ask, where did Luther get his authority to removed 7 books from the canon of scripture and put those books in the apocrypha of his bible? Look at His quote end of page.

When Jesus institutes His Church on Peter, He gave Peter the keys to the kingdom of heaven to do what? Matthew 16:19 . That’s huge authority. And not even the gates of hell will prevail against the Church Our Lord builds on Peter. There’s no better gurantee of success.

15 years after Luther was excommunicated, he said this

"We concede–as we must–that so much of what they [the Catholic Church] is true: that the papacy has God’s word and the office of the apostles, and that we have received Holy Scriptures, Baptism, the Sacrament, and the pulpit from them. What would we know of these if it were not for them?” (Sermon on the Gospel of John, chaps. 14-16 (1537), in vol. 24 of Luther’s Works, [St. Louis, Mo.: Concordia, 1961], p. 304).

That’s from the Father of Protestantism
.

And to what he said, I say Amen, even when used a s a stand-alone statement out of context as you have here. But it in no way is an admission that:

1. those in communion with Rome only and exclusively make up His Church which the Lord built on St. Peter and his great confession of the faith.
2. we are, somehow, outside that faith, that Church He built. His Church includes all who are Baptized, all who confess the OHCAC.

Certainly, there are triumphalists in the Lutheran tradition, and I reject their claims as well.

But one has to ask, where did Luther get his authority to removed 7 books from the canon of scripture and put those books in the apocrypha of his bible?

To ask this question actually implies a certain admitting that he had an authority to “remove” books from the canon. I don’t share your view, either that he had authority to do so, or that he did so.

What he did have was the privilege to question books of the canon, as many Catholics had from the time of St. Jerome all the way up to and even during the Council of Trent.

** “Here we close our commentaries on the historical books of the Old Testament. For the rest (that is, Judith, Tobit, and the books of Maccabees) are counted by St Jerome out of the canonical books, and are placed amongst the Apocrypha, along with Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus, as is plain from the Prologus Galeatus.** Nor be thou disturbed, like a raw scholar, if thou shouldest find anywhere, either in the sacred councils or the sacred doctors, these books reckoned as canonical. For the words as well of councils as of doctors are to be reduced to the correction of Jerome. Now, according to his judgment, in the epistle to the bishops Chromatius and Heliodorus, these books (and any other like books in the canon of the Bible) are not canonical, that is, not in the nature of a rule for confirming matters of faith. Yet, they may be called canonical, that is, in the nature of a rule for the edification of the faithful, as being received and authorised in the canon of the Bible for that purpose. By the help of this distinction thou mayest see thy way clearly through that which Augustine says, and what is written in the provincial council of Carthage.”

These are not the words of Luther, but of Cardinal Cajetan, Luther contemporary and adversary. he didn’t have authority to “remove” books, he does state essentially the same position as Luther. He, like Luther, had the privilege to question and dispute books. This was, or course, written before Trent, as was Luther’s translation, which is 74 books.
Now, I’ m not particularly convinced that Luther and Cajetan were correct, but they both had the privilege of their opinions. I do, however, like Cajetan’s final comment in the quote: “Yet, they may be called canonical, that is, in the nature of a rule for the edification of the faithful, as being received and authorised in the canon of the Bible for that purpose.”

Jon

 

[Dave_Noonan]

Yes when they are with the pope on an issue of faith and morals.

You mean when that word was used in the quote I gave?

“Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church’s divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.”

The word as you can see is not alone. The entire quote has all the parts to it that define an infallible statement.

You’re not considering key points

• there have been 267 successors to St Peter in the last 1,946 years. I think you will agree, It has NOT been a heavily populated office. So it’s not insurmountable to go back and look at each office holder.
• As an individual, the pope can err. He can make all kinds of mistakes. There have been scoundrals in the office. Fortunately only a few. And The Church has never said otherwise.
• The definition on infallibility, shows when and how a pope is infallible. It’s a charism that doesn’t come from him. People who argue against the doctrine actually attack a strawman. Infallibility comes from Jesus and His promise to Peter. Therefore Jesus is who protects the teaching from error. Look again at the Vatican definition I quoted.

I’m not sure of your point. I guess we simply disagree whether the charism of infallibility exists. As I said, I find the doctrine to be against human nature and imposes attributes of God onto human beings, and thus is a basic violation of the First Commandment.

I don’t see promises of infallibility to Peter and/or his successors in scripture–great power does not equal infallibility; consider the record of David and his successors in the Old Testament–power to which this verse alludes. Just because God grants people power doesn’t mean they are good leaders or that they even minimally know what to do morally.

For me, the lack of infallibility is also quite obvious in four verses following the granting of the keys in Matt 16–where Peter is confused on a (perhaps the) fundamental matter of faith.

Further, I think the entire passage is an allusion to Isa 22 where Shebna, the royal steward, loses his high office because he thinks only of himself and his own glory. Literarily, Peter as a character in Matthew always starts off ok, but ends up in big trouble. After the “Satan” remark, I see Peter as simply a deposed Shebna.

In contrast, you think the charism of infallibility does exist because people who claim infallibility tell you that it does. For me that’s just not enough.

In summary, I also take issue with terms like “infallible statement” or “infallible teaching” because I think that infallibility can’t be applied to words–only (theoretically) to beings with agency.

 

[Isaiah45_9]

Is it better to have “de fide” or to have a long list of cut and dried statements? (We have both).

It is exhausting to be Catholic and defend and figure out what is the “De Fide” and what not (CCC, Ott, Denzinger, Encyclicals, Apostolic Exhortations, etc) from both Non-Catholics and Catholics. In a way it is a form of purgation while in the flesh.

Catholics and Protestants both use the absence of infallible declarations as negative proof to relieve themselves of the call to faith.
This thread is exhibit #1 of that.

All threads are subsequent exhibits of that. I call it Exception Theology.

It is really annoying… Maybe I need a break from forums apologetic… lol

 

[Dave_Noonan]

And we’d all agree.

However, when making pronouncements on the issues of faith or morals, intended to bind the whole Church for all time, he is protected by Christ’s promises from making erroneous statements.

The way you stated the issue above indicates that you don’t understand or you don’t wish to discuss the issue in the context of the Catholic definition of papal infallibility.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I don’t think the Catholic definition really follows the use of the word “infallible” in ordinary language. This is more than an issue of semantics; if terms don’t follow their ordinary meanings then their use is confusing at best and deceptive at worst. The same, incidentally, goes for the use of the word “magisterium” in the CCC. I think words and exact terms are important. Just me, I guess.

 

[FathersKnowBest]

I’m not sure of your point. I guess we simply disagree whether the charism of infallibility exists. As I said, I find the doctrine to be against human nature

Oh, that it definitely is!
Laudetur Iesus Christus, nunc et in aeternam

and imposes attributes of God onto human beings, and thus is a basic violation of the First Commandment.

Quite a leap there. Jesus has bestowed on His Church many authorities.
Was it a basic violation of the First Commandment when He told St. Peter to shepherd His sheep?

I don’t see promises of infallibility to Peter and/or his successors in scripture–great power does not equal infallibility; consider the record of David and his successors in the Old Testament–power to which this verse alludes. Just because God grants people power doesn’t mean they are good leaders or that they even minimally know what to do morally.

When Jesus tells St. Peter that whatsoever he binds on earth will have been bound in Heaven, Jesus is essentially writing a blank check and signing it.

FOR THAT REASON, Jesus would have to prevent St. Peter from binding or loosing inappropriately or against the Divine Will.

For me, the lack of infallibility is also quite obvious in four verses following the granting of the keys in Matt 16–where Peter is confused on a (perhaps the) fundamental matter of faith.

You seem to want to purposefully re-define the Catholic definition of papal infallibility, and then argue against that. IOW, setting up a strawman.

Further, I think the entire passage is an allusion to Isa 22 where Shebna, the royal steward, loses his high office because he thinks only of himself and his own glory. Literarily, Peter as a character in Matthew always starts off ok, but ends up in big trouble. After the “Satan” remark, I see Peter as simply a deposed Shebna.

Funny, though, that events such as Luke 21:31ff and John 21:15ff come AFTER this event.

In contrast, you think the charism of infallibility does exist because people who claim infallibility tell you that it does. For me that’s just not enough.

Yeah, it wouldn’t be for me, either. Luckily, nobody is making so foolish a claim. It boarders on the disingenuous.

 

[FathersKnowBest]

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I don’t think the Catholic definition really follows the use of the word “infallible” in ordinary language.

And yet I, and a whole host of scholars much smarter than either of us, use the Catholic definition as a means of communicating the doctrine quite well.

Call it “conditional infallibility” if you like, just don’t use a non-accepted definition of your own making to argue against. It does justice neither to you nor to the discussion.

 

[Dave_Noonan]

And yet I, and a whole host of scholars much smarter than either of us, use the Catholic definition as a means of communicating the doctrine quite well.

Call it “conditional infallibility” if you like, just don’t use a non-accepted definition of your own making to argue against. It does justice neither to you nor to the discussion.

I’m just working from the dictionary: “incapable of making mistakes or being wrong” (noting the emphasis on capacity). If you have a special Catholic definition that’s different, please do provide that.

 

[PRmerger]

I’m just working from the dictionary: “incapable of making mistakes or being wrong” (noting the emphasis on capacity). If you have a special Catholic definition that’s different, please do provide that.

Best if you are on a Catholic forum in discussion with knowledgeable Catholics to use the Catholic definition of infallibility.

Right now, what you are opposing is something which doesn’t exist in our world.

You say, “No man can be infallible!” by your definition.

Yet you actually do believe men can be infallible, by the Catholic definition.

 

[steve_b]

And to what he said, I say Amen, even when used a s a stand-alone statement out of context as you have here. But it in no way is an admission that:

1. those in communion with Rome only and exclusively make up His Church which the Lord built on St. Peter and his great confession of the faith.
2. we are, somehow, outside that faith, that Church He built. His Church includes all who are Baptized, all who confess the OHCAC.

putting this simply, Let’s turn this around.

If I got tired of the Catholic Church and left to join some protestant group, I lose my salvation unless I return to the Catholic Church before I die. That’s what the Church teaches

iow, no matter your opinion, protestants are NOT the OHCAC no matter the stripe.
J:

Certainly, there are triumphalists in the Lutheran tradition, and I reject their claims as well.

Truth is truth. It’s not triumphalistic…except maybe for one who finds themself on the wrong side of truth.
J:

To ask this question actually implies a certain admitting that he had an authority to “remove” books from the canon. I don’t share your view, either that he had authority to do so, or that he did so.

Luther in his translation, removed 7 books from the OT and moved them to the apocrypha. As for what Luither thought of the apocrypha? he said “Apocrypha–that is, books which are not regarded as equal to the holy Scriptures,”

iow Apocrypha is NOT scripture. That my friend means Luther removed canonical books from the bible when he put 7 canonical books into the apocrypha…
J:

What he did have was the privilege to question books of the canon, as many Catholics had from the time of St. Jerome all the way up to and even during the Council of Trent.

These are not the words of Luther, but of Cardinal Cajetan, Luther contemporary and adversary. he didn’t have authority to “remove” books, he does state essentially the same position as Luther. He, like Luther, had the privilege to question and dispute books. This was, or course, written before Trent, as was Luther’s translation, which is 74 books.
Now, I’ m not particularly convinced that Luther and Cajetan were correct, but they both had the privilege of their opinions. I do, however, like Cajetan’s final comment in the quote: “Yet, they may be called canonical, that is, in the nature of a rule for the edification of the faithful, as being received and authorised in the canon of the Bible for that purpose.”

The canon we have today is the same as the canon in 382 at the council of Rome… Jerome didn’t effect that canon, nor did Cajetan in his day effect that canon, and Trent, again canonized this same canon…

since 382 a.d. the canon has been

27 NT books
46 OT books

---

73 canonical books

Luther in his translation had 66 books

 

[Slaney]

No they are just born into it !

 

[Tomyris]

Best if you are on a Catholic forum in discussion with knowledgeable Catholics to use the Catholic definition of infallibility.

Right now, what you are opposing is something which doesn’t exist in our world.

You say, “No man can be infallible!” by your definition.

Yet you actually do believe men can be infallible, by the Catholic definition.

So…Hubby stands on the porch, looks out at the heavy grey sky, the downpour on the horizon with flashes of lightning, the wind coming from it this-a-way and rain-smell, and tells me, “Looks like it might rain.” Is he being infallible?

“Sun will come up tomorrow,” he says,“More than likely.” Once again, is he being infallible?

“I haven’t had a peach pie like that since I was a boy,” he says. He HATES peach pie, which is why, but Social Obligations have forced him to eat the wretched thing. It is true, he has avoided it for DECADES. Is he being infallible?

“Tomi, you are the most beautiful woman in the world,” he tells me. Darn right. He IS infallible.

 

[SteveVH]

Considering the way I worded the question, I’m not sure either. :whacky:

Jon

Don’t you love it when you do that?

 

[SteveVH]

I understood PRMerger’s argument to be that if I took 1Peter to be inerrant, then I had to believe that the writer (Peter) was infallible. To me that’s totally illogical. Maybe I’m misunderstanding the argument.

I’m very confused. If you don’t believe that the Sacred Scriptures are the inerrant word of God, written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, then what do you believe and why would you believe anything contained in them?

From my perspective, faith is a gift and not something people are “talked into” (e.g., Eph. 2:8, John 6:44).

Did you learn your faith in a vacuum or did you receive it from someone else?

IMO, one can’t prove the Bible is inspired (whatever one might mean by that) by simply looking at the surface of the text and as I said earlier, I certainly don’t believe the Bible is inerrant.

Very well. Can you discern the errors from the truth? If the Bible is not inerrant how do you know what is true and what is not and how do you, especially as a Protestant who depends completely on the Bible for your faith, defend your faith?

I believe the Bible is inspired only through faith–not by looking at the surface qualities of the text or by having someone simply tell me that it is.

Only by faith. Faith in what? Faith that the Catholic Church just happened to get it right when it chose 27 books out of the 400 considered for inclusion in the New Testament? Faith in a compendium of books that, while inspired, as you say, contains errors?

People are often wrong. Everyone believed in Aristotle’s conception of the universe for thousands of years until Galileo came along; Aristotle was just wrong.

Do you equate the books of the Bible with the writings of Aristotle and Galileo? Were Aristotle and Galileo inspired by the Holy Spirit?

Since I referred PRMerger to Augustine earlier, you might want to take a look at The Teacher. He nicely makes the point, IMO, that you can’t really teach people into having faith–only God does that.

Sure. I’ll take a look.

Peace

Steve

 

[PRmerger]

So…Hubby stands on the porch, looks out at the heavy grey sky, the downpour on the horizon with flashes of lightning, the wind coming from it this-a-way and rain-smell, and tells me, “Looks like it might rain.” Is he being infallible?

Do you believe that he did this under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit? I mean, really, God-breathed, “I am the servant of the Breath of God” type of knowledge that he would only have because of the divinus inspiratus?

I don’t know of any Christian who doesn’t believe that Peter, Paul, M, M, L and J wrote their texts without the inspiration of the Holy Spirit…so…it’s weird to me to think that people think that Peter just happened to get things right, with the Holy Spirit guiding him.

Really?

 

[Isaiah45_9]

If I got tired of the Catholic Church and left to join some protestant group, I lose my salvation unless I return to the Catholic Church before I die. That’s what the Church teaches

Can you please provide a source for this? I think that’s the first time I have heard a Catholic espouse OSAS

 

[Per_Crucem]

Ours is fallible, but with the very same sources of knowledge as is our belief (and yours) in Christ.

So again, if our basis for belief in the Church is wrong, so too is our belief in Christ. Yours, too.

HOW???

There’s fallible and then there’s fallible. Your drawing some kind of equivalence is not logical. I can say that I know what the winning lottery ticket numbers were yesterday, but I could be wrong (the newspaper could have had a misprint, for example).
That would be far, far different from saying that I know tomorrow’s winning numbers, because I have it on a good inside source, or a “system”.

I’m not saying that your argument is not a better one. I’m only saying that it is still fallible (even if it is less fallible than the evangelical argument).

 

[clem456]

Can you please provide a source for this? I think that’s the first time I have heard a Catholic espouse OSAS

It doesn’t seem he is espousing OSAS. If a person knows the Church is God’s instrument of salvation and knowingly rejects it, that is problematic. He takes himself out of union with Christ.
Of course we have no way knowing all the factors that are between and individual and his Maker, so culpability, invincible ignorance, etc…are issues that I suppose God would be discussing with a person at the appropriate time.
catholic.com/magazine/articles/what-no-salvation-outside-the-church-means