Stand your ground. Simply refuse to go further until they interact with your points. If they are overly stubborn on this point, thank them for their time and leave. If they are *anti-Catholic *(and I mean they specifically believe Catholicism is not Christian), you ought not to argue with them at all much like I won’t argue with KKK members on race theory.
Refuse to change topics…it’s a common tactic by a-Cs. Simply say…“I can deal with that later, but you asked about this other thing and we are not finished with it yet.”
Neither did I, until my Protestant friends accused the Catholic Church of “adding” books to the Bible. Even in my uninformed state, I knew that Catholicism came before Protestantism, historically speaking, and that their Bible was much older than the Protestant Bible. So I found the claims of my friends rather dubious. Yet, at the time, all I could say was “nuh-uh.”
You say correctly that they “summarized,” which is precisely the problem. They avoid getting into details. None dare answer my specific question about the Book of Daniel, for which we have thousands upon thousands of Christian manuscript evidence to evaluate, all of which support the larger recension of Daniel. They prefer instead to do a lot rationalizing, but in the end, not one has given a compelling reason why the larger recension of Daniel *accepted by every Christian Church in early Church history *is to be rejected for an abbreviated version. Surely they have more than the “authority” Jamnian Pharisees who rejected Jesus Christ? They avoid the evidence of Qumran which shows that in the first century, multiple recensions of the same book were common, and as such there was no definitive canon of Sacred texts in the first century. Clearly the Saducees disagreed with the Pharisees, the the Essenes differed even further, the disaposra Jews had their own ideas. That after Christ’s passion and death, the Jewish rabbis were still disputing among themselves the canon of Scripture is documented in their Talmud. Jewish scholarship admits the Hebrew canon was still being debated in the 2nd century AD. That they settled upon something that differed from the 2nd century Christians is irrelevant to the contents of the Christian Bible.
Precisely. And the evidence of history shows that all Christianity accepted the larger recension of Daniel until Protestants chose to abbreviate the Christian Bible.
If Contarini can speak knowledgeably about the historical evidence regarding the Book of Daniel, I welcome him to do so. No other Protestant apologist seems to want to go near it. I suspect that if they did drill down to the details, they would find as I did that there is absolutely no Christian precedent for an abbreviated Book of Daniel. Let me repeat that so it is clear…*there is no Christian precedent for an abbreviated Book of Daniel *before the advent of Protestantism. Not from Jerome, not from Origen? Why? Because the unanimous judgement of the Christian Churches always held to the larger recencison of Daniel. Always.
I look instead to the evidence. So, a good first step in the quest for prayerfully discerning which is the “one true Church of Christ”, I simply ask this, “How big is your Book of Daniel?” If is the abbreviated form, I simply cross them off my list. That narrows the 8,234,985 Christian denominations down to about a handful, I think. Because it is reasonable to believe that the “one true Church of Christ” if truly guided to all truth by the Holy Spirit, would not have abbreviated the Holy Bible which was passed on to them.
A couple of questions:
)Is there anything to suggest that Luther actually removed James from the Bible as opposed to considering it?
I believe that infallibility exists as a gift and certainly the selection of the NT canon was an instance of the gift of infallibility in action. I do not believe however there is any person or venue or formula that will guarantee the gift of infallibility (similar also to the gift of healing).I will have to remember to ask him the next canon thread if he is a participant. I would have to believe that somebody somewhere has answered that specific question. Finding that question and the answer to it and determining whether the answer is credible is another issue. Still it might be interesting to google “Bible apocrypha deuterocanonical” and see where it goes for the next few days. My expectation is that I will not understand a lot of what I read.
But why is the Book of Daniel a smoking gun metric of “one true Church of Christ” anyway? What if I decided to cross off my list any church that persecuted and killed other Christians? Then I would eliminate a different group of the 9.348,289 ecclesiastical organizations out there. It gets back to my point of different metrics yielding different results.
.It says this in the Bible Logan. One of the tests of a true Prophet is if merely one of his/her prophesies dosen’t come true, then that one false prophesy discredits all of them! No false prophesies in our Chruch yet…
A couple of suggestions from John Wesley. That would be that you interpret the Bible through the lens of:
Hmm. I just looked up Matthew 16:18 and I didn’t see that. (actually I do believe the statement in part. If God hadn’t been to some extent protecting the Catholic Church, you guys would be worse than Unitarians and Jehovah Witnesses by now)
We can agree that the Catholic Church has determined authoritatively (at least in the scope of the Catholic Church) what is and what is not true. Meaning for Catholics, if the Church says Mary was assumed into heaven (and those that don’t believe get the wrath of St. Peter and St. Paul), then gosh darn it, that’s the way it is and you absolutely have to believe it.
Yes. But calculatus eliminatus began for me with the absurd claims of my Protestant friends. Once I narrow the search space the the handful of Churches having a correct Book of Daniel, I significantly reduce the number of contradictory claims to be the true Chrisitan Church.
I don’t quite understand you. Bruce Metzger is a Protestant scholar that is well repected by Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant alike, and by quite a wide variety of Protestants. He admits that the larger Daniel is supported by the witness of thousands upon thousands of Christian manuscripts in the various ancient languages. He’s not “some guy” on the internet. However, I recommend you verify his claims for yourself if you wish.
- Why are you stuck on Daniel? I ask because none of the web sites I looked on apocrypha/Deuterocanonicals mentioned Daniel outside of the larger issue of 73 or 66 books (you don’t expect me to use the logic that becuase some guy on internet forums said so…therefore it must be true…therefore I must become Catholic… now do you
It is the inspired Word of God. That should be “big” enough, since we do not live by bread alone, but by EVERY WORD that comes from the mouth of God.
His translation of the Bible removed all the parts of Daniel that we consider inspired, and placed it into an appendix. Likewise, he did the same to James.
I understand you think so. But I find that incompatible with Scriptural ecclesiology. Heb 13:17 states, “Obey your leaders and submit to them; for they are keeping watch over your souls, as men who will have to give account. Let them do this joyfully, and not sadly, for that would be of no advantage to you.”BTW you have to remember that each one of us are our own Pope.
Amen! As Protestant historians admit…
Scripture did not guarantee the*** impeccability*** of the members or even the pastors of the Church. In fact, the Bible states the Church will be filled with wheat and chaff. Peter himself was a hypocrite who denied Christ three times. Yet he never errored in his Gospel message. The criteria of impeccability is epistemolically absurd. However, Jesus did tell the Church that he would sent them an Advocate, to guide them to all truth and be with them forever. Thus, the one true Church, while not impeccable, is indefectable and infallible, and therefore must be found in every century since the advent of Christianity. So I look to the Christianity taught in every century, and specifically look for novelties such as that first claimed by Protestants. If Protestantism is to be believed, then I would have to believe that NO CHURCH in Christian history had the correct Bible until Luther. That’s simply not convincing. The Holy Spirit didn’t take a huge vacation from guiding the Church until a Catholic monk named Luther decided to carve out parts of the Bible and invent Bible alone and Faith alone doctrines.
If you believe the Bible has only 66 books, while you may not call yourself a Protestant, the rest of the world knows better. A 66-book Bible, Bible alone, Faith alone…these are the primary marks of the various and divergent Protestant Churches. While there are not many doctrines common to all Protestant churches, these three seem to be shared among them. And since the Christian Church of the first 1500+ years before Protestantism never taught such doctrines, it seems clear that Protestantism has departed from the one true Faith.
Yes, but this same problem exists for such Christian dogmas as the eternal sonship of Christ, or the everlasting damnation of the wicked. That the Son is “eternally begotten of the Father” is not verifiable. I know of a Protestant seminarian who wrote his PhD dissertation, using “Bible alone,” to “prove” the Nicene Creed was wrong, and the the Son was NOT “eternally begotten of the Father.” Built upon incorrect epistemology–a uniquely Protestant epistemology–all sorts of errors are born.
Right, Dave. But they don’t just decide to teach something, so that makes it right. It took 'em almost 300 years to think through to the Trinity. These doctrines are all deeply embedded in the matrix of Scripture, even if they are not explicitly stated in words of one syllable.
Absolutely! As Pope Paul VI affirmed…
BTW…finally good to talk with someone with some level of intelligence here. I guess my greater point was that in the same way you criticize us for the 66 book Bible, the Orthodox can criticize you for the 73 book Bible. And any fair investigation on what is canonical has to include all three possibilities.
No offense, but the “some guy on the internet” was you.
I am not familiar with Bruce Metzger.I just did a google search on “Lutheran Bible James Remove” under the logic that if the Lutherans really did something as outrageous as remove a book from the Bible I should be able to find it under google easily. I found nothing. Wikipedia confirmed what I thought (that Luther had a low view of certain books but never removed them). If you have a link to that please share. Maybe my google skills need improvement.
Hmm…I do think my subtle attempt at sarcasm was …um… unrecognized (It was just repeating the hyperbole some Catholics have accused us of being).
This separation of impeccability and infallability seems very incredulous for me to believe. I would have to believe that at the same time the Catholic Church was hunting down and burning the anabaptists like I kill flies on my window (and the reformed drowning them), God was simultaneously granting the Catholic Church the gift of infallability at Trent. It seems incredulous to believe and totally opposite to the way God operates unless a very strong case for it exists in Scripture. I have not yet come upon that case. Maybe someday I will.
Well first of all, I don’t believe that either (that the Holy Spirit took a huge vacation from guiding the Catholic Church). That makes no sense to me either.
The difference with here is that with the dogmas you describe, I can at least open my Bible and see a case for them, even if I am not able to prove them.
This I suppose goes back the dogma of papal infallability when speaking ex-Cathedra on an issue of faith and morals.
My point is merely about the method of determining what is true and what is not. I see no method in Protestantism for determining with certainty what is true. We can debate whether the Catholic method for accomplishing this certainty is valid or not, but I’m merely pointing a method exists.
The title, “Mother of God” is hardly “just a title” it is the natural consequence of the true personal unity of Christ as defined at the Council of Chalcedon. Don’t take it up with us. Go talk to a good Protestant, like R.C. Sproul, who will give you the best concise delineation of this doctrine that you will ever hear. This is not a doctrine on which Protestants and Catholics disagree.