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zach_dunn
Guest
I think a moral commentary on something like TNG or any of the series would be something I’d definitely read! That’s a very neat idea!
BTW . . . what did Janeway do that was so immoral???
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BTW . . . what did Janeway do that was so immoral???
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JRRTFAN
Guest
It’s Patty not Patti/ GO to EWTN audio library and search for Patty Bonds, she’s been on Journey Home with Marcus Grodi twice.
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zach_dunn
Guest
I spend my time on precisely because I have the true teachings of the Church. I want to make that truth known to the world and especially my Protestant brothers and sisters and to do that I must be able to tackle their toughest arguments. That’s why I read books by White, go through CARM every once in a while and read various Protestant websites. When I debate someone one of my highest goals is to not use straw men.
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Tiberius1701
Guest
I didn’t say she wasn’t admirably moral as well, just that I feel Picard is more so. Maybe it’s just because I know him better thatn I know her, or maybe it’s because he’s a guy like me so it’s just easier to look to Picard as a role model than to Janeway… (Or maybe it’s just her raspy voice…I think a moral commentary on something like TNG or any of the series would be something I’d definitely read! That’s a very neat idea!
BTW . . . what did Janeway do that was so immoral???
)That’s an excellent and admirable goal.
And if good Catholics didn’t read any non-Catholic books, then we’d never get fantastically-well researched books like Upon This Rock by Steve Ray. As Sun-Tzu says, “Know thy enemy,” (or, in this case, “Know thy separated brothren.”)
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Mark_David
Guest
Generally speaking: the way I see sola scriptura now, having (re)gained Christ through the Catholic Church, is that it would be downright strange and pretty uncaring of God to have left us an inspired Book some 2000 years ago… and then henceforth to remain completely silent until the judgment day. Catholicism, by sheer reason, makes infinitely more sense on that front alone. God lives through the Bible’s teachings, yes, but also (as I understand it) as the head of the Living, Universal Church, which, naturally, is the one that He founded; and one that also happens to be without significant division ("… that you all speak the same thing, and there be no schisms among you…" 1 Cor 1:10; “For God is not the God of dissension, but of peace…” 1 Cor 14:33"; etc). As for James White: I occasionally listened to him as a Protestant, but eventually got tired of his haughty attitude. Where’s the love, after all? There’s room for it in apologetics, as there is everywhere else. Arrogance and spiteful intolerance doesn’t help bring anyone closer to good theology; quite the contrary, clearly.
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SGWessells
Guest
Z. Dunn wrote: “And within those two it was really his use of the Fathers that got to me. It does seem that a casual reading of them promotes a much higher view of Scripture than many modern Catholics give it today.”
A useful book called Not By Scripture Alone, edited by Robert Sungenis, lists the quotes White gives from the Fathers, then puts them in their context, where the same Fathers defended Tradition as being equally authoritative. White, like many other Protestants, quotes selectively, but the Sungenis book blows his arguments out of the water. Read it! All your questions will be answered and doubts laid to rest. Mine were. This book was a major reason I returned to the Church.
A useful book called Not By Scripture Alone, edited by Robert Sungenis, lists the quotes White gives from the Fathers, then puts them in their context, where the same Fathers defended Tradition as being equally authoritative. White, like many other Protestants, quotes selectively, but the Sungenis book blows his arguments out of the water. Read it! All your questions will be answered and doubts laid to rest. Mine were. This book was a major reason I returned to the Church.
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zach_dunn
Guest
Thank you! It has now been moved to the top of my list
If it’s not too much, and this is me assuming you own the book yourself, could you provide some of the quotations provided that put White’s quotations into context?
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mackbrislawn
Guest
I would add the teaching that Jesus is God, and the Holy Spirit is God comes from Tradition. Of course, we believe it is found in scripture as well, but the writings of Ignatius and other early Christian authors show that they called Jesus God. Ignatius wrote in the year 110, well before the NT was gathered and canonized. So that would be well before much exegesis of scripture could have been done. Hence, that Jesus is God was a teaching directly delivered by the apostles and missionaries to the earliest church.
The first Christians did not have to wait until the NT was written and assembled to know what they were to believe!
For me, that is what makes the whole idea of sola scriptura nonsensical.
Furthermore, scripture itself explicity denies sola scriptura. Peter in 2Peter 3:15-17 says, “Our beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, speaking of this as he does in all his letters. There are some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures.” (RSV) Other translations say “untaught” and “unsteady.”
Okay, who are the ignorant or untaught? Well, they are those who are untaught and ignorant of Tradition! Tradition forms the teachings in which Paul’s letters and scripture are to be understood. Without that prior background of tradition, an ignorant person is liable to misundertand scripture, to his own destruction.
The full Tradition is to be found in the Catholic Church. Therefore, only within the Tradition of the Catholic Church can scripture be understood rightly.
There can be only one true interpretation of scripture. However, there can be many false interpretations. That is why there are so many different interpretations outside of Catholicism.
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ajcstr
Guest
I regard the Catechism as a summary of Catholic Tradition and tradition. Tradition to me is how we interpret the Bible.
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SGWessells
Guest
One trick Protestants use is selective quotation. For instance, they will quopte St. Athanasius, from Against the Heathen, saying, “:the sacred and inspired Scriptures are sufficient to declare the truth,” but ignore other writings by Athanasius such as this, from Ad Serapion: “But beyond these [Scriptural] sayings, let us look at the very tradition, teaching, and faith of the Catholic Church from the beginning, which the Lord gave, the Apostles preached, and the Fathers kept. Upon this the Church is founded, and he who should fall away from it would not be a Christian, and should no longer be so called.”
Note that the tradition he speaks of goes “beyond the Scriptures” yet is the norm and defining characteristic of a Christian.
Protestants also love to quote Acts 17:11: “Now these Jews [in Beroea] were more noble than those in Thessalonica, for they received the Word with eagerness, examining the scriptures daily to see if these things were so.” RSV. “See?”, Protestants exclaim triumphantly, “they examined the scriptures, not manmade traditions.” But wait…to see if what things were so? They had the scriptures already; what did they have to look at? Luke gives us the answer in 17:2,3, which tells how Paul’s custom in a new town was to go to the synagogue and argue from the scripture, that is, the Old Testament, that Jesus was the Christ. But the Jews in the synagogues had the scriptures also. What they did not have was the meaning, which had been hidden from the prophets of old, and revealed only after Christ had risen; that is, the tradition, the living faith, which Paul testified had been handed down to him as well. Just as the Ethiopian Eunuch in Acts 8 could read Isaiah all day and still not know who the suffering servant was, so the Jews in Beroea could not understand the scriptures until Paul went and “preached to them Jesus.” For the Scriptures by themselves need the interpretive context of Apostolic teaching passed down through the Church to reveal their meaning.
Read Sungenis’ book: there are pages of quotes from the Fathers supporting Tradition. Protestants forget that the Church came before the New Testament and passed down its meaning from the same Apostolic sources. Because they do not believe in Apostolic tradition, every mention of tradition to them means something merely human, and therefore suspect.
Note that the tradition he speaks of goes “beyond the Scriptures” yet is the norm and defining characteristic of a Christian.
Protestants also love to quote Acts 17:11: “Now these Jews [in Beroea] were more noble than those in Thessalonica, for they received the Word with eagerness, examining the scriptures daily to see if these things were so.” RSV. “See?”, Protestants exclaim triumphantly, “they examined the scriptures, not manmade traditions.” But wait…to see if what things were so? They had the scriptures already; what did they have to look at? Luke gives us the answer in 17:2,3, which tells how Paul’s custom in a new town was to go to the synagogue and argue from the scripture, that is, the Old Testament, that Jesus was the Christ. But the Jews in the synagogues had the scriptures also. What they did not have was the meaning, which had been hidden from the prophets of old, and revealed only after Christ had risen; that is, the tradition, the living faith, which Paul testified had been handed down to him as well. Just as the Ethiopian Eunuch in Acts 8 could read Isaiah all day and still not know who the suffering servant was, so the Jews in Beroea could not understand the scriptures until Paul went and “preached to them Jesus.” For the Scriptures by themselves need the interpretive context of Apostolic teaching passed down through the Church to reveal their meaning.
Read Sungenis’ book: there are pages of quotes from the Fathers supporting Tradition. Protestants forget that the Church came before the New Testament and passed down its meaning from the same Apostolic sources. Because they do not believe in Apostolic tradition, every mention of tradition to them means something merely human, and therefore suspect.
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mark_a
Guest
And White’s calling scripture merely “sufficient” seems downright insulting. Even to a Catholic.
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zach_dunn
Guest
Thank you very much! This post helps quite a lot and I really like the two quotations from Athanasius!
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