How can / do non-Catholic Christians refute this???

[icxc_nika]

The issue that I personally have with much of the typical protestant notion regarding the bible is this:

There were obviously many different gospels and epistles floating around Christendom by the 4th century.

The Holy Catholic Church declared what gospels / epistles were the truly God inspired books, and which ones had potential errors.

Some of the books even contained many parts that were true, but since they were not free of error, they were not made part of the bible as we know it. ( nor were they edited and placed in the bible in an edited format )

The same church that authoritatively concluded what bible was true and what books were not… is the same church that exists today. The same liturgical and worship practices continue today essentially unchanged since a time where there was no “bible” as we currently know it.

It continues to boggle me that people would accept the bible as it is currently written… but the very church that gave us the “bible” is shunned for most other aspects of it’s practices.

The fact of the matter is that the bible is, and always has been, part of the Christian Worship and Tradition.
To remove the bible from the place of worship, and create your own tradition and worship is by it’s nature incomplete ( to be gentle )

The crazy way that many people hang on every little word in the bible is what is gauling to me.

It is a translated version of the original… removed so many times from the original source. People can pretend that they can scholastically translate the “orignial” greek etc. but the fact is that they can not in any true sense.

A translation is just that by it’s definition. You will never have the identical phrases/objects/cultural references translated perfectly. AND you don’t have to! Unless of course the bible is the only thing you had to hang your hat on. Than I could understand the fuming debate that rages in many protestant sects.

As an intlectual exercise to illustrate my point: Pick up a newspaper and read an article. Than pick up a some writings from Abe Lincoln and reada few passages from him. Than read some of the works from George Wasington or Ben Franklin. You will already see a fairly stark differnece in thewa that they simply speak. Keep going back… read something from 500 yrs. ago and then 700 yrs ago. You will soon be lost in many of the phrases, cultural references, and points that they make.

Imagine now the bible written 2000 yrs. ago.

We have the essence of the writings preserved in the church Tradition. We have our current day Apostolic succesors, who continually point back in time from generation to generation, that continue to take the essence of the writings and apply them to our every day lives.

We don’t get hung up on what the definition of is is.

I have no idea on what God will do with any one of us regarding our salvation… that is for him to judge… I only feel bad that people go their entire lives without having the proper spiritual medicine to make this journey that much more fruitful and God inspired.

Peace-

 

[Ziggamafu]

Recognizing is not judging.
And how do you avoid infinite regress? If you need an infallible authority to “judge” Scripture, then you need another infallible authority to “judge” that one, and so on and so forth. No matter how you rephrase your argument, it fails because of this.

Because I accept the testimony of the Church.

Because the Church has not historically given them the same authority.

Edwin

There is no infinite regress because the authority to judge what is Scripture rests in Christ, through the Apostles and their successors. In Protestantism, the “middle” is taken out. If Christ is the ceiling and the Scriptures are chain link hanging from the ceiling, then the teaching authority of the Church (the Magisterium) is the hook from which the chain hangs. In Protestantism, there is no hook; Christ did not give us the canon. Rather, there is a ceiling and a chain, mysteriously floating in the air but suspended by nothing. How is that not absurd?

I start from the premise that theology - no matter how fanciful - must be reasonable.

 

[Contarini]

There is no infinite regress because the authority to judge what is Scripture rests in Christ, through the Apostles and their successors.

You aren’t surely claiming to be Christ? If you are not (and if you say you are I frankly don’t believe you), then by your own argument you need some basis on which to “judge” whether Christ has given His authority to the Apostles and their successors, and who these successors are. You can’t get yourself out of this pickle you have gotten yourself into.

Never mind that the Apostles and their successors are not Christ either, which your argument implies. . . .

And never mind that Vatican II (quoted in the Catechism) explicitly rejects the view that the Magisterium is superior to the Word of God of which Scripture is the written form. Your argument fails on all counts. It is not logical and it isn’t even orthodox Catholicism. The Church does not “judge” Scripture according to current Catholic teaching. It humbly hears, recognizes, and obeys the Word of God speaking in Scripture. That is orthodox Christianity. That is what the Fathers believed, that is what the medieval scholastics believed, that is what the Catholic Church clearly teaches today. Only some late medieval canon lawyers who got too big for their britches blasphemously denied this, and they contributed to the rending apart of Christendom as a result. It’s too bad that some Catholics still follow this debased and heretical tradition as opposed to the authentic Sacred Tradition which honors Scripture as the written Word of God and thus gives it authority over the Church rather than the other way round.

In Christ,

Edwin

 

[Ziggamafu]

The *inspiration *of Scripture did not rely on the Magisterium, but the *recognition *of that inspiration did. If we could not *infallibly *know what books were inspired, we could not claim to “know” what Scripture infallibly teaches because we could not “know” what books are Scripture. The Scriptures are divine revelation and are superior to the Magisterium, which has - unlike Christ - only *limited *infallibility. The Magisterium has both ordinary (i.e. councils of Hippo and Carthage) and extraordinary (i.e. Councils of Nicea and Trent) forms.

Objectively, the Scriptures do not need to be infallible in order to recognize the infallible authority of the Magisterium. We may treat the Scriptures on the same level as other early Church writings to ascertain the infallible authority that the Magisterium was given by Christ on a simply historical level (beginning with the presupposition that Christ is God).

But that is beside the point. I begin my argument with the assumption that Protestants believe the absolute infallibility of Scripture to be essential to their faith; their pillar of truth, upon which all of their doctrines and morals stand. If that is so, then Protestants *must *believe one of the following two options, as any other option (believing in a fallible collection of infallible books) is absurd:

**a) **Christ clearly and certainly declared the canon of Scripture to the Church.

b) Christ graced the Apostles with the charism of infallibility, and they in turn clearly and certainly declared the canon of Scripture to the rest of the Church, but the gift of infallibility ended with the death of the last Apostle.

Catholics are not restricted (by *sola scriptora *)to the options above and instead believe a third option:

**c) **Christ graced the Apostles with the charism of infallibility, and that gift was passed on to their successors to guide the Church in doctrinal and moral truth - including the canon of Scripture - until the culmination of all things.

I believe the third option (obviously), but that is not what I am arguing. It seems to me that most Protestants reject all three options, believing that the Church recognized books that were divinely inspired but there was no infallibility involved. And that is what I say is clearly absurd; to argue for or against absolute truth based on the assumption that the Bible is infallible when at the same time it is admitted that it is not infallibly known what the Bible is. Absolute contradictions are absurd. And a “fallible collection of infallible books” is just that!

 

[Contarini]

I begin my argument with the assumption that Protestants believe the absolute infallibility of Scripture to be essential to their faith; their pillar of truth, upon which all of their doctrines and morals stand.

That’s a false assumption. Some Protestants believe this, but they are horribly wrong. While the content of their faith is Christian, their formal approach is Islamic rather than Christian. The resurrection of Jesus Christ, and not the “absolute infallibility of Scripture,” is the basis for the Christian faith.

I am arguing from the perspective that both a Protestant theology resting on the infallibility of Scripture and a Catholic theology resting on the infallibility of the Church are fundamentally wrong-headed. (Two Protestant theologians who have influenced me in this respect are the Christian Church theologian Frederick Norris and the Methodist William Abraham–just to show that I’m not maintaining some weird position of my own or even a distinctively Anglican position.) Infallibility is a conclusion, not a premise. It follows from what we believe about Scripture, and arguably in some sense also from what we believe about the Church. (I will gladly grant infallibility if we mean by it that we can be confident that the Church was right when being wrong would have meant making shipwreck of the faith, and that it or some remnant of it will continue to be so–indeed, I’m strongly inclined toward the opinion that we can have this confidence of the See of Rome specifically, but of course in that opinion I really am being more Catholic than Protestant!) But if you start out with the assumption that we must have some infallible authority in order to have any true knowledge, then you’ll tie yourself up in knots.

Witness your blithe statement that we don’t need an infallible Scriptures to witness to the Magisterium. This makes no sense. Most Biblical scholars–even Catholic scholars–do not think that the “upon this rock” statement in Matt. 16 was actually stated by Jesus. I think they are wrong, and I’m happy to agree with you that the Catholic scholars who take this position are being far too liberal–but the fact is that many of them do take this position, and that this is an accepted view in mainstream scholarship. So your claim that Scripture witnesses to the Magisterium seen only as a historical document is simply false. That is not what most Scripture scholars conclude. Only dyed-in-the-wool apologists who start from Catholic premises make any such claim.

There are good reasons to accept the resurrection of Jesus as a historical fact and to accept the witness of historic Christianity as an authentic transmission of the truth about Jesus and what His life, death, and resurrection mean for the human race. That being the case, there are good reasons to accept the canonical Scriptures as being what the historic Church has said they are–authoritative records of Jesus’ teaching and saving work. Only then do we get to some idea of infallibility.

In other words, I am paradoxically taking a more Catholic approach than you are. (This is because you are, if I’m not mistaken, following Karl Keating, who appears to have adapted his argument from the Calvinists of the Old Princeton School–Keating just tweaked it to make it Catholic. Keating made a serious mistake in doing this–the argument is flawed from the start and flawed in a peculiarly Protestant way!) You start from Scripture as a historical record (ignoring all the Biblical scholars who tell you that Scripture isn’t reliable historically), and claim to deduce the Church from that. This is nothing but old-fashioned Protestantism, except that you claim (again, following the Princeton School) not to be assuming the divine authority of Scripture at this point. This has always been a bogus, disingenuous argument, whether used by Protestants or Catholics.

I, on the other hand, start where any good Catholic starts, with the Church. I do not need to assume the Church’s infallibility, only that the Church is a community existing throughout time and bearing witness to the Resurrection. Unlike you, Keating, and the Old Princetonians, I don’t claim to be proving anything. I claim only that this is a reasonable chain of probability which commands my assent for a myriad of intellectual, experiential, and aesthetic reasons.

Your method is rationalistic and rationalistic in a naive and indefensible way. My method uses reason and experience, but does not claim to rest on them wholly. In the end you have to choose to believe or not–your choice is not compelled by absolutely foolproof evidence. This is what calls for absolute certainty resting on infallibility completely ignore.

 

[Contarini]

b) Christ graced the Apostles with the charism of infallibility, and they in turn clearly and certainly declared the canon of Scripture to the rest of the Church, but the gift of infallibility ended with the death of the last Apostle.

If the “charism of infallibility” is a fancy way of saying that God made sure they would be right, then no, that didn’t cease with the death of the last Apostle. God still makes sure that the Church will be right on occasion. The difference between you and me is not that I think God doesn’t make sure that the Church will be right, but that I don’t think this charism necessarily attaches to any particular office. I don’t think there is anything absurd about the idea that the Apostles had a charism which we do not possess today, but that is not a necessary premise. Not everything the Apostles said was divinely inspired. On the contrary, I think it is impious to assume that God would let any inspired utterance be lost, so we are to assume that those Apostolic utterances not handed down to us (in Scripture, since I am unaware of any credible claim to an inspired utterance handed down otherwise–the saying of Papias about the vines in the millenium would be the most plausible candidate, and as far as I know no one thinks that this is an authentic saying of Jesus or divinely inspired) were not divinely inspired.

The more one examines your presuppositions, the more they fall apart. You are following a will-o-the-wisp deriving ultimately from a particularly rationalistic and untenable version of conservative Protestantism.

Since tonight will be my last visit for a while, I will not be able to respond to your response. So I’ll let you have the last word, unless the debate should still be going at Easter!

Edwin

 

[Ziggamafu]

It sounds to me then, that you are not refuting my argument. You view the Bible as you view the Church: authoritative, but only to a point, and certainly not “infallible”. And that’s fine, there’s no logical absurdity there.

Believing the Bible to be infallible while believing the Church that authored and compiled the Bible is not infallible is absurd.

Believing the Bible to be, generally speaking, authoritative because the Church that authored and compiled the Bible is, generally speaking, authoritative is not absurd.

In fact, I know at least a few Protestants like this, who individualistically differ all judgment to a subjectively interpreted Holy Spirit. But that is a Christianity of relativism and it just doesn’t offer enough substance to me; little or no absolute truth. I believe in Truth and I believe He is a Person; the Logos, the Author of Reason. And it seems reasonable to me that he would not leave the Church without some kind of supernaturally guaranteed protection from universally teaching error in matters essential to our faith.

 

[BrianH]

It sounds to me then, that you are not refuting my argument. You view the Bible as you view the Church: authoritative, but only to a point, and certainly not “infallible”. And that’s fine, there’s no logical absurdity there.

Believing the Bible to be infallible while believing the Church that authored and compiled the Bible is not infallible is absurd.

Believing the Bible to be, generally speaking, authoritative because the Church that authored and compiled the Bible is, generally speaking, authoritative is not absurd.

In fact, I know at least a few Protestants like this, who individualistically differ all judgment to a subjectively interpreted Holy Spirit. But that is a Christianity of relativism and it just doesn’t offer enough substance to me; little or no absolute truth. I believe in Truth and I believe He is a Person; the Logos, the Author of Reason. And it seems reasonable to me that he would not leave the Church without some kind of supernaturally guaranteed protection from universally teaching error in matters essential to our faith.

Hes gone for Lent, do you want to have the last word or something

 

[rbarcia]

It took the Church a long time to write the Scriptures and a very long time to figure out what was and wasn’t divinely inspired. And the councils that did this (beginning in the fourth century, I think) listed the canon as Catholics understand it, which included the books the Protestants would reject a thousand years later…how then could the Bible be the only infallible rule of faith?

Most of the Bible was written before Jesus came and started the Church. The Old Testament came from God’s chosen people Israel.

So should we ask Israel for proper interpretation of the Old Testament then?

I would say, most of the New Testament came from Jewish people as well.

Deciding what is canon, and writing the Bible are 2 different things.

Maybe if you separate these things, then you could understand.

How can something be declared to be ‘the Word of God’ have less authority than the word of men. That seems much less logical to me

**

2 Peter 1

20 knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation,21 for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.

**

 

[Ziggamafu]

So should we ask Israel for proper interpretation of the Old Testament then?
…
How can something be declared to be ‘the Word of God’ have less authority than the word of men. That seems much less logical to me

1. Of course not, and for the same reasons that we should not entrust the decisions of the Council of Jamnia about what is and is not canonical in the Old Testament. After the Holy Spirit was poured out upon all Christians - and in a special way to the teaching authority over all Christians - such decisions were left to those in God’s covenant; members of his Kingdom, the Catholic Church, which a few centuries later exercised their normal authority in deciding what books belonged in the Catholic Bible.
2. The infallability of the Church Magisterium (as well as her ordinary authority) is not above the Word of God but blossoms forth from Him; He is the one who gave this essential gift to her and it is by His voice, the living voice of His Body, the Church, that this gift is exercised.

 

[Contarini]

It sounds to me then, that you are not refuting my argument. You view the Bible as you view the Church: authoritative, but only to a point, and certainly not “infallible”.

That’s not true. I do believe the Bible to be infallible, and I’m not sure how you concluded differently.

Believing the Bible to be infallible while believing the Church that authored and compiled the Bible is not infallible is absurd.

Asserting a thing does not make it so. The Church has always taught that the Bible is divinely inspired, so simply referring to the Church as the “author” is not telling the whole truth. The Bible is infallible because it is inspired. The Church is guided by the Spirit so that it does not fall into fatal error. If you want to call that infallibility, that’s fine by me. I’m rejecting your argument more than your conclusions. There is nothing absurd or even odd about saying that the Bible has a higher degree of authority than the Church. The idea that the Bible is purely a product of the Church and thus cannot have greater authority than it is heresy, pure and simple. It is in direct contradiction of the constant teaching of the Church throughout the centuries, and it contradicts what is found in the Bible itself (obviously the Bible as a whole can’t witness to the whole canon, but there is plenty in the Bible about the nature of Scripture in general and about those parts of Scripture that had already been written).

In fact, I know at least a few Protestants like this, who individualistically differ all judgment to a subjectively interpreted Holy Spirit.

That’s not what I’m doing.

And it seems reasonable to me that he would not leave the Church without some kind of supernaturally guaranteed protection from universally teaching error in matters essential to our faith.

I have no problem with a statement beginning “it seems reasonable to me.” I have a problem with a statement beginning “it is absurd that.” Of course the RC position is a reasonable one. It may even be true. But it cannot be proven to be necessary.

Edwin

 

[mozart-250]

Belief in a fallible collection of infallible books, moreover with no infallible method of interpretation, seems to be a logical impossibility; it seems absurd. The idea of an infallible collection of infallible books, moreover with an infallible method of interpretation seems much more reasonable and much less silly.

Well I’m not sure I agree with the definition of “fallible collection of infallible books” either.

First because it seems to be a sloppy use of the terms “fallible/infallible”.

Remember, infallible means “incapable of being incorrect”. Strictly applied, this term is only applicable to a process…not an event or an entity. The key word here being “incapable”.

If a repeatable process, if exactly followed, is guaranteed never to produce an error, then that process might be considered infallible.

I would think the term “inerrant” would better apply to a entity such as the Bible. An entity can not be “capable” or “incapable”.

Second of all, the decision of the canon is an event, not a process. The results of an event might very well be error free, however this does not mean that the process used at that event is incapable of being wrong.

To illustrate, I might get a score of 100% on a math test. The outcome of this event is error free. It does not necessarily follow that I am infallible in math.

So maybe better the Bible is an error-free collection of error-free books.