C
Contarini
Guest
Well, reality isn’t as simple as that. The limits of orthodoxy are not as clearly defined as that. People who were historically influential in the Catholic Church, and historically accepted as Catholic, don’t magically vanish just because you decree pontifically that they weren’t really Catholic.
Besides, you’re begging the question. The limits of the OT canon had not been defined until the Council of Trent (they were defined at Basle but not in one of the sessions later accepted as authoritative, I believe). So these theologians were within their rights in questioning the OT books. I’m less certain about the NT, but I don’t believe that the local councils of the early Church that defined the NT canon were infallible either by Catholic standards. So the same would apply.
Why not?
You’re begging several questions here. Luther would reject your definition of the Catholic Church in the first place, so he’d deny your claim that he was dismissing it. If you see the Church as the believing community through the centuries, defined by the Word of God rather than defining it, then your objection melts away. Besides, we’re back to the fact that Luther’s objections were not new–he accepted the books that had been unquestioned throughout the Church’s history. So he was hardly dismissing the historic witness of the Church as to the canon.
But even if it were true that Luther simply dismissed the historic witness and rejected books based on his own private theological criteria, then that very fact would invalidate your objection. In that case clearly the “Bible” Luther was rejecting wouldn’t be the Bible of the Catholic Church–it would be the Bible that met the criteria of the Gospel as he understood it. Note that I don’t think this is a fair description of what Luther was doing. But if it was (as you seem to think), then this would be fatal to your argument.
Traditionally the distinction is that the undisputed books can be used to prove doctrine. “Apocrypha” cannot, but are still profitable for moral instruction. This is the view adopted by the Anglican 39 Articles, and it appears to have been more or less Luther’s position as well.
On what basis do you say this? How do you know there can’t be degrees of inspiration? This seems like an entirely arbitrary claim to me.
No, the Church had not decided the point 1000 years earlier.
I’m not sure that it makes sense to say that someone decides something “on their own” if they are listening to (name removed by moderator)ut from others. But at any rate, I don’t think everyone should follow Luther’s example. I think that classical Protestantism delivered itself hand and foot to the Magisterium of Scholars, and a more dreadful fate is hard to imagine for any form of Christianity! (Actually there’s one thing worse–to submit your church to the dictates of the civil authorities–but the Protestants managed that too, especially the Anglicans and the Lutherans.)
I have huge problems with Luther and with Protestantism. But many of the objections raised don’t hold water. Nothing is ever a knock-down argument in cases like this. Rather, it boils down to a basic moral choice between options. You can’t prove which is the right choice. You can’t prove that Protestant authority structures are insufficient, if people have a conception of the Church for which those authority structures are sufficient. Protestantism is coherent and defensible on its own grounds. The question is whether those grounds are such as to enable authentic Christianity to survive and flourish.
In Christ,
Edwin
