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Contarini
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It doesn’t.
But we can speak of Scripture as the Word of God in a very concrete way. Language about the Word of God in Tradition (while entirely valid in my opinion) is much more nebulous. And the legitimate Protestant concern is that this simply leads to an identification of “the Word of God” with “whatever the Magisterium says.”
Edwin
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Contarini
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Contarini
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Certainly.
Actually Dei Verbum is quite clearly speaking of the Word of God in the secondary sense–the apostolic proclamation about Christ the Living Word, handed down in both Scripture and the living Tradition of the Church.
But the Church’s servanthood with respect to both modes of transmission of the Word is very clear. Any Catholic arguing that the Church is superior to Scripture is going against Vatican II. The problem, from a Protestant perspective, is that Catholics in practice seem to have a lot of trouble distinguishing between Tradition and the Church, which means that the statement “Scripture and Tradition are both the Word of God” easily becomes “the Church is equal or even superior to Scripture.”
I’m not sure what gives you the idea that I disagree with this statement.
That the traditional usage of the word “authority” fits a text very well. There is therefore no incongruity in saying that Scripture is the final authority, at least in terms of medieval scholasticism. It is the classic text to which we resort to solve disputes. Of course there needs to be an interpreter. But any rhetoric putting the interpreter above the text contradicts both Vatican II and sound reason, since as I’ve said before if the interpreter is superior to the text you don’t need the text.
Then why repeat it, when it clearly is based on false statistics?
Sorry that I wasn’t clear. I was not in fact talking about Catholics but about Protestants. My point was that division does not arise from saying that Scripture is the final authority. Division arises from my (or rather Luther’s) saying “what *I *see in Scripture must be right, therefore if the Pope and the theologians of the major universities see something else in Scripture they are Antichrist and have perverted the Gospel.” Many Catholic apologists mistakenly think that they have to tear down the authority of Scripture in order to refute Protestantism. This just puts weapons into the hands of Protestants.
Edwin
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Contarini
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No need to apologize. I had a conversation more than a year ago with two scholars from SPU (at the Wesleyan Theological Society conference) in which they seemed horrified that I used the word “normative” about Scripture. They insisted that I was misreading the second-century evidence and that the early Church did not develop a canon in response to Marcion. They made me feel very undereducated on this point, and I realized how much I read the early Church through Reformation lenses, even as I disagree with much of what the Reformers taught.
I’d like to see evidence for this. You may be right. I bought a book on this subject at the WTS conference, after the conversation mentioned above, and promptly lost it. I need to get it again this summer and read it. I have read Gamble, *Books and Readers, *but it was a while ago.
Yes, and I’d like to see more on this.
But again, it would highly surprise me if early Christians thought that unorthodox texts could be inspired. Perhaps non-apostolic texts could be inspired in the sense that they were written too late to be canonical but were still recognized as inspired in some way (Hermas, for instance). And if by “Catholicity” you mean something like “universal acceptance by the Church” then I can certainly see how Christians in one part of the Christian world might consider a book inspired but non-canonical. But by definition that would mean that the Church *as a whole *did not consider it inspired.
In short, the only one of your criteria that actually seems “additional” to me is apostolicity, and then only if you mean “written by the apostles or their immediate successors” as opposed to “in agreement with apostolic teaching.”
Edwin
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Contarini
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Actually I thought that is what I said. But as Vatican II put it, the Church is the servant of the Word of God. In that sense one is “inferior.” But I don’t think I am pitting one against the other.
**
Are you making the claim the early church fathers and other fathers explicitly taught Sola Scriptura?**
Why would you think this? Some of them seem to have taught the “material sufficiency” of Scripture, and at times, in polemical contexts, they may even have spoken of Scripture being clear or self-interpreting or whatever (certainly Protestant apologists compile catenas of proof-texts to that effect), but the teaching and practice of the early Church as a whole clearly assumes the authority and necessity of the Church as the interpreter of Scripture, as well as the possibility of some apostolic teaching coming down through means other than Scripture. So not, I’m not claiming anything of the sort.
I thought that what I said was quite clear, but obviously it wasn’t. I don’t know how to make it any clearer. The Fathers clearly did not think that the Church was in any way superior to Scripture. They recognized Scripture as the Word of God and they believed that the Church submits to it (as well as to any apostolic teaching that can be found to have been passed down apart from Scripture). By the fourth century they clearly thought in terms of a hierarchy of authorities, with apostolic teaching (chiefly found in Scripture) at the top and individual theologians at the bottom, with bishops and councils in between.
I don’t have a misunderstanding. We are saying the same thing. You have a misunderstanding because you irrationally assume that I must be disagreeing with you and conforming to your stereotype of a “Protestant” (perhaps you have not talked to many Anglicans before?).
In fact, if anything you’re more Protestant than I am, because I am open to the possibility that some apostolic teaching might be passed down to the Church apart from Scripture.
Why would I want to do that?
Edwin
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crazzeto
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Quite true, the Church is very much the servent of the Eternal Word of God and is most certainly inferiour to it, as it is through that same Word the church her self and all of creation came to be.
The thing is, Protestants tend to believe that the sum total of the “Word of God” is the bible. Not so, the sum total of the Word of God is far greater than the bible alone, though the bible is most certainly the inspired record of much of the teachings we are to accept.
Rather the Eternal Word of God is nothing less than Christ Jesus through whom all was created. In fact the Sacrade Scriptures of abundantly clear on this point.
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jokerman
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how do you know when they are right and when they arent?
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PRmerger
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I don’t believe it is.
Now you’re creating a false dichotomy, Contarini. No Catholic here has been arguing that the Church is superior to Scripture. Only that it has the authority to interpret it.
The Church is not superior to Scripture. No one is saying that. The Church is its guardian and interpreter.
Without it you have the "silly’ confusion of 40,000 different Christian denominations.
Well, I’m still not sure what your point is in all of this. It appears that we are agreed on most things, and it appears that you are arguing a point that no one has even made…and it appears you brought up some weird Middle Ages references that has nothing to do with the topic, except to provide us with an interesting but absolutely irrelevant etymology of the word “authority”.
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PRmerger
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I don’t happen to believe it is based on false statistics.
So, what’s the *actual *number of Christian denominations? Please cite your source.
I’d be happy to start quoting, “There are actually ________ Christian denominations”, if someone would just provide a source.
Right now, the only source I’ve found is this one, and it says we have 41,635 Christian denominations today.
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larkin31
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interestingI don’t happen to believe it is based on false statistics.
So, what’s the *actual *number of Christian denominations? Please cite your source.
I’d be happy to start quoting, “There are actually ________ Christian denominations”, if someone would just provide a source.
Right now, the only source I’ve found is this one, and it says we have 41,635 Christian denominations today.
this source labels 242 of these “denominations” as Roman Catholic.
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PRmerger
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Ok. So minus 241 from the 41,000 statistic.
Would you still then accept, “There are now over 40,000 Christian denominations”, each claiming that the HS led them to their truth.
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AmateurPianist
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I really don’t know theology all that much, but I do know numbers.Ok. So minus 241 from the 41,000 statistic.
Would you still then accept, “There are now over 40,000 Christian denominations”, each claiming that the HS led them to their truth.
The appropriate math operator here would not be subtraction but division.
Remember that what this source did was to add to each base denomination a certain adder which is the number of countries.
In the case of the Catholic denomination that adder was 281.
But there are multiple base denomination.
So the net amount that the total number is over is (adder * number of base denominations).
So you have two choices:
(1) You can stop using that source entirely recognizing that what it considers a denomination really isn’t by your standard.
(2) Or if you want to use this source to estimate the number of Protestant denomination we would take the same adder (281) that was used for Protestant denominations and divide by it. In this case you would divide 40000/281. The answer is 142. I suspect this is low because the adder of 281 is high for most other Protestant denominations.
(3) The most accurate way would be to manually go to each base Protestant denomination and subtract the number of extras due to country (because I suspect the adder would differ by denomination). This would be the most accurate but of course would be painstaking.
Now I would humbly suggest that y’all just scrub that source, but if you want to use it, options 2 and 3 are a fair way to account for the double counting that obviously occurs (unless you want to say there are 281 Catholic denominations which would be up to you). Up to you.
What makes your argument ridiculous is when you keep citing the same number even after you have been told it is bogus. And I am telling you right now this number is bogus if you want to insist there is only 1 Catholic denomination (and I know numbers) and how to compensate for it.
It only really discredits you. I would think that if there were such a thing as one true organization as the exclusive church of Jesus Christ, the least it could do is use numbers accurately and fairly represent the facts. You all just discredit yourselves using the 40000 figure and make you all look like snake oil sellers.
But it is up to y’all if you want to continue to discredit your faith I suppose. I can’t stop you, the only thing I can tell you is that at best it comes across as ridiculous and at worst it comes across as deceitful.
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PRmerger
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So what’s the actual number of Christian denominations? Please cite your source.
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AmateurPianist
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I don’t know.
But I will accept any source if cited consistently and fairly. So if you want to claim there are 40000 Protestant denominations per that source, then you must also claim there are 281 Catholic denominations. Or you can find a neutral source that says there is 1 Catholic denomination and use that figure. Either way is good with me.
Or you can forego citing bogus figures and just use the word “many”. That would be my recommendation but up to you.
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Contarini
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But the reason for that ridiculous 241 figure (I thought it was 238) is that the compilers count a separate “denomination” for the Catholic Church in each country. That means that instead of subtracting 241 from the figure, the figure should arguably be divided by 241. That would give us fewer than 200 denominations. The problem with that figure, of course, is that most Protestant groups are not represented in every country of the world, so perhaps we should divide by 100 or 50 instead.Ok. So minus 241 from the 41,000 statistic.
Would you still then accept, “There are now over 40,000 Christian denominations”, each claiming that the HS led them to their truth.
The problem with this entire approach is that as Catholics keep pointing out, the Catholic Church is not a denomination. What Catholic apologists don’t seem to notice is that for that very reason, it’s ridiculous to speak as if Protestant denominations were equivalent to the Catholic Church. In other words, even if there are thousands of denominations, that doesn’t mean that there are thousands of Protestant groups divided from each other in the way the Catholic Church is divided from other churches.
If you want to make a case for the division of Protestantism, you have to look at groups that actually teach different things and are in some meaningful way divided from each other. And you can’t rely on the 30,000 or 40,000 figure to do that.
As long as Catholic apologists keep using this silly approach, Protestants will have an excuse not to take them seriously. And that’s too bad, because it’s vital that Protestants *do *start taking the hideous problem of division seriously.
Edwin
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Contarini
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It has been pointed out over and over that the statistics in question count any church existing in more than one country as multiple “denominations,” leading to the conclusion that there are several hundred denominations in the Catholic Church alone. They’d have done much better to say that there are 23 denominations in the Catholic church, since sui juris churches are the Catholic equivalent of denominations.
Which leads to the point that denominations are ecclesiologically irrelevant. Two denominations may be in full communion with each other and acknowledge each other’s doctrines as orthodox, just like sui juris Catholic churches or autonomous/autocephalous Orthodox churches. What you are presumably interested in is how many “failed-attempts-to-be-the-sort-of-thing-the-Catholic-Church-is” there are. Since a denomination is not such an attempt, the number of denominations is irrelevant.
If you are determined to have a figure, probably the 41,000 figure is as good as any. But for the reasons given, it’s completely irrelevant to ecclesiological debate, because it’s concerned with organizational structures within a given country and not with groups that consider themselves a unified Church.
How about this: I’ll start caring about how many denominations there are when you define “denomination.”
Edwin
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Contarini
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Dei Verbum 2.10 said:
It seems pretty clear to me that all three references to the “word of God” are talking about the same thing–the apostolic proclamation which is preserved in both Scripture and Tradition.
Originally the claim (post 116) was that the Church has the *same *authority as Scripture. However, your post 131 appeared to say that the Church had greater authority. Apparently you didn’t mean this and were only arguing hypothetically, but I’m a little baffled by why you would do that. Furthermore, you and others have repeatedly argued that the Church is the “final authority” or “final arbiter,” in a context in which this authority of the Church seemed to be contrasted with the authority of Scripture itself.
And I’m not disputing that. I’m trying to argue with what you guys actually say. You seem to be arguing with what you think Protestants are supposed to say–ignoring the fact that many of us Anglicans are not Protestants theologically, at least in this respect (i.e., we believe in the authority of Sacred Tradition).
It’s not irrelevant at all, given your continual repetition of the phrase “the Church is the final authority or final arbiter.” The question is whether the Church, as the interpreter of Scripture, can itself be said to be subject to the authority of Scripture. You seem to dislike this language. I am arguing that it is well-grounded in the pre-Reformation Christian tradition. I am not denying the Church’s authority to interpret Scripture, and I am not even arguing that Scripture is the only means by which we have access to apostolic teaching.Well, I’m still not sure what your point is in all of this. It appears that we are agreed on most things, and it appears that you are arguing a point that no one has even made…and it appears you brought up some weird Middle Ages references that has nothing to do with the topic, except to provide us with an interesting but absolutely irrelevant etymology of the word “authority”.
Edwin
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crazzeto
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Edwin, how does this statement compare with Revelation:
Or how about John Chapter 1:
Just trying to expand out to what the true Word of God is, ultimtatly it is nothing less than Jesus Christ. It speaks to us, in a way we can understand in many ways. Through the Scriptures, through Tradition or just through the Holy Spirit directly to one in spiritual need.
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Contarini
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I’m not disputing that the Word of God primarily refers to Christ. I am pointing out the specific way in which Dei Verbum uses it–to refer to the deposit of faith preserved in both Scripture and Tradition. And the Church serves the Word of God (as so defined) whether found in Scripture or Tradition.
Edwin
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