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Stephen_C
Guest
Again see post # 58.
When Jesus gave peter the Keys he also gave him the authority to “bind and loose”. And what ever he bind and loose" on Earth will be so in Heaven.
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When Jesus gave peter the Keys he also gave him the authority to “bind and loose”. And what ever he bind and loose" on Earth will be so in Heaven.
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Damascus
Guest
A teaching body would be useless without having something to teach, and some reason to teach it. God must speak first, and then men can teach.
So there would not be anything to teach if the bible was not out there huh?
where in the scriptures is it determined? show me please. I unsubsribed from this thread and then I saw you posted. So I came in to see what if anything you may have added to clarify your position.
I cant find a thing. This thread is loosing steam. You are speaking in riddles and you dont back a thing up with anything more than your personal opinion.
The arrogance that any person can jettison any aspect of what the brightest minds have studied for 2000 years and come to the table with absolutely nothing to refute it with is a pure waste of time.
Bloom where you are planted and see how far you will get by doing it your way.
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mercygate
Guest
When Jesus left the 11 on the mount of Transfiguration, he bade them t – y’know? those 11 guys." to go and “teach all nations.” So that’s what they did, and their succesors in the Apostolic succession have been carrying out that mission for the past 2000 years.
It is impossible for the canon to have invented itself. There were dozens, if not hundreds of writings that did not make it into the New Testament. Some of the books that made it were hotly contested: 2 & 3 John, James, 2 Peter, Hebrews, Revelation . . . We believe that the Holy Spirit caused the councils to “hear his voice” when they defined the canon.
I see that you are still at that blood chilling place when you have discovered that the Scriptures had a history that is inseparable from the Church. That happened to me when I was about 19 and a cocky Greek Orthodox friend shattered my universe by telling me that “the Church gave us the Bible.”
Instantaneously, I grasped the whole picture. Of COURSE the Church gave us the Bible. Who else would know or care what the New Testament was supposed to be? Took a while for me to come to grips with it, but I knew I was going to have to deal with it in a decicive way, and that it would mean coming to some kind of terms with the Catholic Church.
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The_Augustinian
Guest
One comes to the Church not through their own reasoning, but through the grace of God. So, there is no “private judgement” involved. Sola scriptura has to assume that each individual’s private judgement is led by the Holy Ghost, which seems to me to be impossible given the multiplicity of sects with contradictory beliefs, all led by private judgement. Obviously, if we pick up our Bible, God will not automatically tell us how to interpret such and such a text.
Here is an excellent dialogue by Dave Armstrong (a former Evangelical) addressing the very concerns you raise. Here is another lengthy article by Al Kimel (a former Episcopalian priest) on the hermeneutics. Seek, and ye shall find!
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Nick_Jones
Guest
In my OP, I asked if anyone had a better alternative than SS as the rule of faith. If your rule of faith is better, what is it, and why is it better than SS?
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Stephen_C
Guest
See post # 58
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Damascus
Guest
You asked what was wrong with SS.
We answered.
You asked what you should replace it with.
You got answers.
Now you act as if The question is now: what is your rule of faith?
This has already been discussed.
IF you cant even see that, you dont want to. This post is titiled:
MY rule of faith.
Be your own Pope. That is exactly what you are doing right now.
Viva la Papa Sola Scriptura Nick!
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Nick_Jones
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Hi Damascus,
There have been some replies saying that we got the bible from the CC. This is false because Jesus and the apostle Paul referred to “the scriptures” knowing that people of that time understood what was meant by “the scriptures.” If some of the scriptures pre date the CC, then it is **not possible **that we got the scriptures from the CC.
As to the question how do we know what is and isn’t scripture, this has been accomplished by the supernatural power of God, who willed that His sheep would be able (by grace) to hear God’s voice in the scriptures. This shouldn’t be surprising. Why would God cause the written word to be available to men who are unable to know that scripture is God-breathed?
God has the supernatural ability not only to provide His written word to mankind, but also to cause some people (the church) to recognize scripture as the very word of God, and to hunger for it.
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Nick_Jones
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I’m asking again, as I did in my first post, why is your rule of faith better than mine? If I ought to trust the CC magisterium, why should I trust it?
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Nick_Jones
Guest
Are you saying that the CC of today is the same church as the church that Jesus founded? If so, how could we know this?
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The_Augustinian
Guest
First of all, Jesus and St. Paul referred to the Hebrew Scriptures, the canon of which was not universally accepted by all Jews (like the Sadducees). We can accurately say that we got the Scriptures from the Church in two ways: first, because the Scriptures were written by men of God, who are all members of the People of God (present today as the Catholic Church) and the Church authoritatively determined that certain scriptures are canonical.
Your second contention is circular reasoning. What are Scriptures are canonical? They are the ones that Christians believe in. What is a Christian? A Christian believes in the Scriptures. All you’re saying is that the canon you believe in is correct because God told you so, and that we Catholics are unfortunately unenlightened.
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The_Augustinian
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How about reading the Church Fathers for starters?
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Nick_Jones
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But is my circular reasoning worse than yours?
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The_Augustinian
Guest
It’s not circular reasoning because I’m not saying that the Church derives its authority from Scripture, but rather both the Church and the Scriptures derive their authority from God. The Church is not founded on a set of writings, but on the apostles and prophets, according to St. Paul in his letter to the Ephesians. The Twelve were not directed to write down the Gospels, but to directly preach the Gospel. The Scriptures were written for the Church. The Church does not come from the Scriptures.
Moreover, the authority of the Church does not allow it to create new dogma, but to outlaw heretical ones. Thus, the Church does not directly interpret Scripture, but rather, like a good shepherd, sets up a boundary in order to protect the sheep from falling off the cliff of heresy.
I’m not sure if you’ve read those links, but it seems to me that you have not; this might show others that you have little openness to discussion. Many of us (myself included) have been former Protestants, so we know many of the old arguments, and obviously we think they are flawed. If you are truly interested in the truth, please read those articles I linked to, as well as a good book on the Church such as The Spirit of Catholicism by Karl Adam or the pertinent entries on the Catholic Encyclopedia. Anyway, I have nothing more to say.
God be with you,
T.A.
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mercygate
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Nick, the “scriptures” referred to by Jesus were the Law and the Prophets, which we know as the Old Testament. Although all Jews accepted the Torah, and the major prophets were pretty much agreed upon, the Jews themselves did not have a certain and closed canon. Clearly, in New Testament times the infant Church had begun to accept certain Christian writings as “scriptures” formative of the Christian faith, since Peter refers to Paul’s writings along with “the other scriptures.”
From our secure historical position, looking back on centuries of a closed canon, most of us cannot really understand that “scripture” in those pre-canonical days before the Councils of Hippo and Carthage was not an absolute, defined body of writing.
Catholics believe this.
Catholics believe this also. Where you seem to be having trouble is in accepting the idea that “some people (the church)” were entrusted with the messy part of the job: writing the original manuscripts through divine inspiration, and consenting to their significance via the mouth-to-mouth and hand-to-hand transmission of the texts and the traditions in which they were formed. You seem opposed to the idea that this should have been accomplished by human beings, who happened to be constituted as the Catholic Church, in a historical flesh-and-blood setting.
After 3 centuries, when many texts – both authentic and spurious – were proliferating and causing confusion throughout the Christian world, “some people (the church)” came together in Council to ratify the canons of both the Old and New Testaments as a way of protecting the local churches from heresy and to secure the consolidation of the faith.
Mind you, this is a decade after the first four ecumenical councils (all of which are accepted by most Christians, including mainstream Protestants) had been convened to manage doctrinal matters pertaining to the nature of Christ. Doubtless, the struggles for defining these doctrines brought the Church to recognize that spurious “gospels” and other writings had contributed to the dissemination of heresy. This highlighted the need for a closed canon.
The New Testament did not arrive from heaven full-blown as a black leather bound, gilt edged, India paper, red-letter edition codex. For three centuries, the New Testament was not put together in a single volume.
You might want to look at a book called Where We Got the Bible.
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mercygate
Guest
See post 13.
Would you agree that the Catholic Church today is historically the same Catholic Church that was identified as such in 1600? How about 1400? 1100? 900? 600? How about 325? 250? 135? 107? 85? 55 A.D.? This is not a matter of jiggery-pokery or a question of mindless faith. The historical record testifies to the continuity of the Church – both physical and doctrinal – back to the Acts of the Apostles and thence to the Upper Room and to Calvary.
The Apostles who were told to “teach all nations” were the same eleven Apostles to whom Jesus promised to send the comforter: to “guide you into all the truth.” They are the same Apostles to whom Jesus gave the power of binding and loosing (Mt 18). The history of the early Church, sketched so lightly in the New Testament, is the history of those Apostles. But only to Peter did Jesus promise the keys of that binding and loosing in order to insure that they would bind and loose with one mind.
The Catholic Church traces all of her bishops back to those men. She has been sending forth their successors via the laying on of hands for 2000 years. They have maintained the integrity of the faith for 2000 years.
That is how we know the Catholic Church is the Church Jesus himself promised to build upon the rock of Peter. Quibble all you like about Peter/Petros/Petra. One thing is sure: without communion with Peter, the church is not the Church Our Lord promised to build.
The idea that Scripture “alone” outside of fellowship with the Apostles can be a sure and certain rule of faith is a novelty of 16th Century rebellion and a direct contradiction of 1500 years of Christian teaching and fellowship. It is nothing more than an institutionalization of the old playground taunt:
My Holy Spirit can beat up your Holy Spirit!
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mercygate
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The canon was closed after the first TWO ecumenical councils. These councils did, however, promulgate the Nicene Creed.
Sorry about that; I was in caffeine deficit at the time.
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Nick_Jones
Guest
As I’ve said before, history too, must be interpreted… and will be interpreted partly by our own individual view of the world. In any case, it seems to me that what Rome is saying is:
We know that the CC has to be the infallibly true church because only the CC can trace its history all the way back to the first pope, St. Peter, and we know that Peter was the first pope because CC teaching is infallible.
So, circular reasoning is used by both sides in order to validate our private decision concerning ultimate authority.
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ncgolf
Guest
No … Peter was primary among the apostles because Jesus said he was … that is in Scripture. I wonder how the early converts had the assurance that to follow Peter was to follow Christ. They did not look at the Bible … it didn’t exist. They listened and relied upon the teaching of Peter and the other apostles … and after they were gone those appointed by the early apostles. This is where the teaching authority of the Church began … with those appointed by Jesus to continue his ministry … He did not leave a book. You must look to the early church and in your mind figure out how it survived for 300 years without an official canon. Most people trust the Bible more than the Church … but to deny the Church is to deny the Bible for the Bible is only as trustworthy as its source. If the CC is unworthy as a source then what good is the Bible and if the CC is the source of the Bible then how can one deny the Church? It really is quite simple.
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mercygate
Guest
You asked how we know that the Catholic Church is the Church founded by Jesus Christ.
The mutually corroborative testimony of the Early Church Fathers, of Scripture, and of history outside the Church testifies that the Cathoic Church we see today is the taproot line of the Apostolic Church witnessed to by all three sources.
Infallibility (which is actually a subset of indefectibility) is linked to Jesus’ promise to build his Church upon Peter (not without him), his promise to the eleven to send the spirit to guide them “into all the truth,” and upon his prayer that the eleven “might all be one” as he and the father are one. To those eleven he gave the charge to “teach all nations.”
It is not circular reasoning to say that:
- Scripture says Christ will build his Church upon Peter.
- The first 150 years of Catholic Church history witnessed powerfully to what was claimed by Scripture: that Jesus is God and the Son of God.
- The Catholic Church traces its history back to the Church witnessed by the first 150 years of Christianity, and that Church was in communion with Peter.
- Early writings confirm that it was generally held that the See occupied by Peter was honored both because of its historical association with Peter and because of its doctrinal integritiy.
- If Jesus was God and the Son of God, we can trust that he would be able to do, and WOULD do, what he said he would do: build his Church upon Peter.
It is impossible to demonstrate from history, tradition and Scripture that the Church to be built by Jesus should NOT have its physical, earthly component in Communion with the Apostles.
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