T
Traditional_Dad
Guest
I am late to this discussion and there are many fine contributions but here goes:
This is in response to PC Masters request that he be given scriptural evidence that transubstantiation is scriptural and his “requirement” that a respondent ONLY quote scripture or go elsewhere.
I reject the premise of the argument. Show me where in the Bible it says everything we need to believe and do is in the Bible. It does not, nowhere, ever. My Protestant friends usually go to 2 Timothy, 3:15-16.
15 And because from thy infancy thou hast known the Holy Scriptures which can instruct thee to salvation by the faith which is in Christ Jesus. 16 All scripture, inspired of God, is profitable to teach, to reprove, to correct, to instruct in justice.
First he is speaking here of the Old Testament since at the time this was written likely only the Gospel of Matthew existed and he refers to the scriptures which Timothy would have known since his infancy – the Old Testament. Secondly saying all that is written “is profitable to teach” does NOT imply that verbal tradition is less profitable to teach, just as saying “NY strip is a good cut of meat” does not imply that filet mignon is less so.
In addition saying I do not want to talk about the Early Church Fathers is unjustifiable. If you want to know what Jesus taught you should go to the men who where there being taught by him and his apostles. Ignatius of Antioch and Polycarp both heard John the Apostle preach and in Ignatius’s case he was appointed by the Apostle Peter to the See at Antioch. Polycarp and Ignatius, both of whom died for the faith, were hearers of the preaching and in a much better position to tell us what they meant. A more modern example that may help illustrate this: No matter how you feel today about the issue of gun control and the interpretation of the 2nd amendment, if you read the accounts of the state level conventions of the time which approved the constitution and the Bill of Rights, the contemporaries of the writers clearly understood the 2nd amendment to be guaranteeing the right of private citizens to “keep and bear arms.” In those days the militias was made up of men called from the citizenry and were self armed. Someone reading this today with a state funded, uniformed, organized militia could easily and in good faith assume it meant only the right to have such an organized state controlled militia, but he would be wrong because he would be reading those words through the filter of his assumptions based on today and NOT looking at it as the people who wrote it did. When PC reads the Gospels today he reads them through the filter of his fundamentalist, Protestant and apparently anti-Catholic assumptions. He is no objective interpreter.
The dismissive tone of PC’s comments and demands that no one respond to this unless they cite strictly scriptural evidence illustrate an unwillingness, that may extend to an inability, to see the argument for transubstantiation because of his pre-existing assumptions.
We can take joy in following Saint Paul’s admonition to remember “all that I have taught you, whether by my word or my epistle,” and accept the scriptural evidence for transubstantiation because the oral evidence or tradition from the guys who heard the apostles speak tell us that is EXACTLY what Christ meant and it is His real flesh and His real blood. Since you are what you eat and we eat Jesus Christ, I encourage PC to join the Church Christ founded, the Catholic Church, and eat His flesh and drink His blood and be part of the body of Christ.
This is in response to PC Masters request that he be given scriptural evidence that transubstantiation is scriptural and his “requirement” that a respondent ONLY quote scripture or go elsewhere.
I reject the premise of the argument. Show me where in the Bible it says everything we need to believe and do is in the Bible. It does not, nowhere, ever. My Protestant friends usually go to 2 Timothy, 3:15-16.
15 And because from thy infancy thou hast known the Holy Scriptures which can instruct thee to salvation by the faith which is in Christ Jesus. 16 All scripture, inspired of God, is profitable to teach, to reprove, to correct, to instruct in justice.
First he is speaking here of the Old Testament since at the time this was written likely only the Gospel of Matthew existed and he refers to the scriptures which Timothy would have known since his infancy – the Old Testament. Secondly saying all that is written “is profitable to teach” does NOT imply that verbal tradition is less profitable to teach, just as saying “NY strip is a good cut of meat” does not imply that filet mignon is less so.
In addition saying I do not want to talk about the Early Church Fathers is unjustifiable. If you want to know what Jesus taught you should go to the men who where there being taught by him and his apostles. Ignatius of Antioch and Polycarp both heard John the Apostle preach and in Ignatius’s case he was appointed by the Apostle Peter to the See at Antioch. Polycarp and Ignatius, both of whom died for the faith, were hearers of the preaching and in a much better position to tell us what they meant. A more modern example that may help illustrate this: No matter how you feel today about the issue of gun control and the interpretation of the 2nd amendment, if you read the accounts of the state level conventions of the time which approved the constitution and the Bill of Rights, the contemporaries of the writers clearly understood the 2nd amendment to be guaranteeing the right of private citizens to “keep and bear arms.” In those days the militias was made up of men called from the citizenry and were self armed. Someone reading this today with a state funded, uniformed, organized militia could easily and in good faith assume it meant only the right to have such an organized state controlled militia, but he would be wrong because he would be reading those words through the filter of his assumptions based on today and NOT looking at it as the people who wrote it did. When PC reads the Gospels today he reads them through the filter of his fundamentalist, Protestant and apparently anti-Catholic assumptions. He is no objective interpreter.
The dismissive tone of PC’s comments and demands that no one respond to this unless they cite strictly scriptural evidence illustrate an unwillingness, that may extend to an inability, to see the argument for transubstantiation because of his pre-existing assumptions.
We can take joy in following Saint Paul’s admonition to remember “all that I have taught you, whether by my word or my epistle,” and accept the scriptural evidence for transubstantiation because the oral evidence or tradition from the guys who heard the apostles speak tell us that is EXACTLY what Christ meant and it is His real flesh and His real blood. Since you are what you eat and we eat Jesus Christ, I encourage PC to join the Church Christ founded, the Catholic Church, and eat His flesh and drink His blood and be part of the body of Christ.
Thus, you can understand that I’m somewhat hesitant.
In order to complete the passover you had to eat the lamb. (BTW I learned this from Scott Hahn a formerly virulently anti-catholic presbyterian minister, who was convinced of Catholic Truth by study of scripture. Now he’s a professor teaching theology and scriptural studies to seminarians.)