The key to showing the error of Protestantism

[JonNC]

Since the CC has its roots from the jews…it would everything that protestants reject…

I’m not sure what this means, but the point is clear that at least Luther’s view of the DC books, all of them, as not being equal with the canon, was not about particular doctrines. One need only read his commentaries on them.

As examples:
On the Wisdom of Solomon:
** It pleases me beyond measure that the author here extols the Word of God so highly, and ascribes to the Word all the wonders God has performed, both on enemies and in his saints.

From this it can be clearly seen that what the author here calls wisdom is not the clever or lofty thoughts of pagan teachers and human reason, but the holy and divine Word. . .

To refer to this book as the Wisdom of Solomon is as much to call it: A Book of Solomon about the Word of God. So the spirit of wisdom is nothing other than faith, our understanding of that same Word; this, however, the Holy Spirit imparts. Such faith or spirit can do all things, and does do all things, as this book glories in chapter 7 [v.27]. . .

This is the foremost reason why it is well to read this book: one may learn to fear and trust God. To that end may he graciously help us. Amen.” **

Jesus Sirach
** Its real name is otherwise Jesus Sirach, after its author as its own prologue and the Greek [50:27] indicate. This is how the books of Moses, Joshua, Isaiah, and all the prophets are named, after their authors. Yet the ancient fathers did not include this one among the books of sacred Scripture, but simply regarded it as the fine work of a wise man. And we shall let it go at that.
…
This is a useful book for the ordinary man. The author concentrates all his effort on helping a citizen or housefather to be Godfearing, devout, and wise; and on showing what the relationship of such a man should be to God, the Word of God, priests, parents, wife, children, his own body, his servants, possessions, neighbors, friends, enemies, government, and anyone else. So one might well call this a book on home discipline or on the virtues of a pious householder. This indeed is the proper “spiritual discipline,” and should be recognized as such.**

1 Maccabees
** This is another book not to be found in the Hebrew Bible. Yet its words and speech adhere to the same style as the other books of sacred Scripture. This book would not have been unworthy of a place among them, because it is very necessary and helpful for an understanding of chapter 11 of the prophet Daniel. For the fulfilment of Daniel’s prophecy in that chapter, about the abomination and misfortune which was going to befall the people of Israel, is here described—namely, Antiochus Epiphanes—and in much the same way that Daniel [11:29–35] speaks of it: a little help and great persecution by the Gentiles and by false Jews, which is what took place at the time of the Maccabees. This is why the book is good for us Christians to read and to know. **

Judith
** Therefore this is a fine, good, holy, useful book, well worth reading by us Christians. For the words spoken by the persons in it should be understood as though they were uttered in the Holy Spirit by a spiritual, holy poet or prophet who, in presenting such persons in his play, preaches to us through them. Next after Judith, therefore, like a song following a play, belongs the Wisdom of Philo, a work which denounces tyrants and praises the help which God bestows on his people. The song [that follows] may well be called an illustration of this book. **

The fact is Luther doesn’t present a doctrinal issue for is view of the DC books. He does present the view of the ancients, and others, just like other Catholics who wouldn’t have had a issue with Purgatory, intercession of the saints, etc.

And as is usually the case with this subject, I’m not even defending Luther’s conclusions. I am merely pointing out that it isn’t doctrine that caused him to not hold them equal to the other books of the canon.

There is enough for Catholics to disagree with Luther about regarding the canon of scripture. Ascribing to him positions he did not have isn’t necessary.

Jon

 

[JonNC]

If I may say, in Tobit we have angelic intercession plus alms-giving (works) can forgive sins, in 2 Maccabees we have saintly intercession and purgatory. I don’t know about the other books.

From Luther’s preface of Tobit
** “What was said about the book of Judith may also be said about this book of Tobit. If the events really happened, then it is fine and holy history. But if they are all made up, then it is indeed a truly beautiful, wholesome, and useful fiction or drama by a gifted poet. . . Tobit shows how things may go badly with a pious peasant . . . there may be much suffering in married life, yet God always graciously helps and finally crowns the outcome with joy . . . Therefore this book is useful and good for us Christians to read. It is the work of a fine Hebrew author who deals not with trivial but important issues, and whose writing and concerns are extraordinarily Christian.” **

Luther doesn’t mention Purgatory in his preface on 2 Maccabees. He does mention what he (and others) believe were stark contradictions in historical events between 1 Macc and 2 Macc.

Jon

 

[JonNC]

For me, the clincher issue is that the canon of Scripture was decided by councils of Catholic bishops. Protestants are depending on the decision at the third council of Carthage in 397 AD and one in Hippo in 393. All the deutero-canonical books were included.
Why would our separated brethren revert to one sect of Judaism’s canon while ignoring the canons of other sects that include them, as in the Ethiopian canon? As the tract on the Old Testament at catholic.com says, the 7 books were removed for doctrinal reasons. That is, these books refuted Luther’s doctrinal innovations.
Why would they trust a Jewish sect that rejected Jesus?

Again, if you are going to make a charge that Luther excluded books for doctrinal reasons, you have to provide two things:

1. what said doctrines were for each book
2. Where Luther states that these were his reasons.

Jon

 

[PRmerger]

Again, if you are going to make a charge that Luther excluded books for doctrinal reasons, you have to provide two things:

1. what said doctrines were for each book
2. Where Luther states that these were his reasons.

Jon

It’s not that each book was rejected.

They were rejected in corporate.

Because of Maccabees and its reference to purgatory.

Thus, if Maccabees is wrong, all of the deuterocanon must be wrong.

 

[bettyg51]

I am a catechist for our RCIA. We use the Catholic Answer Bible, which has apologetics articles that are very helpful. I highly recommend it to those who are unfamiliar with
why Catholics believe what we do. I hope you will also do some reading in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

 

[Church_Militant]

Thank God when I go to sleep at night I know I am saved unlike Catholics!

You actually have no idea what you’re talking about. If you believe that you are saved and cannot lose your salvation then again you ignore the plain text of the Word of God. Look here at ***Revelation 3:[5] He who conquers shall be clad thus in white garments, and I will not blot his name out of the book of life; I will confess his name before my Father and before his angels.

***Now because we already know that in order to be saved our names must be found in the Book of Life we can plainly see that Our Lord Jesus Christ tells us there that these names, already recorded there can and will in some cases be blotted out.

As for your inference that we have no assurance of salvation…

As the Bible says, I am already saved (Rom. 8:24, Eph. 2:5–8), but I’m also being saved (1 Cor. 1:18, 2 Cor. 2:15, Phil. 2:12), and I have the hope that I *will be *saved (Rom. 5:9–10, 1 Cor. 3:12–15). Like the apostle Paul I am working out my salvation in fear and trembling (Phil. 2:12), with hopeful confidence in the promises of Christ (Rom. 5:2, 2 Tim. 2:11–13).

Assurance of Salvation?

Actually the Catholic church Separated God’s people from his book!

Oh sure, but there’s no evidence of that. You yourself wouldn’t even have a Bible had not the Catholic Church canonized it in the 4th century and then preserved and propagated it. The fact is that your own 1611 Authorized KJB contained the same books as our own up until a "Bible society’ in the mid 1800s removed the Deuteroccanonical books as a cost cutting measure. It would help you a great deal if you actually did your own homework and got the facts instead of believing deceptions and anti-Catholic propaganda spoon fed to you by preachers, teachers and others who have themselves been so deceived by others.

 

[JonNC]

It’s not that each book was rejected.

They were rejected in corporate.

Because of Maccabees and its reference to purgatory.

Thus, if Maccabees is wrong, all of the deuterocanon must be wrong.

Source where Luther said this.
Read Luther’s prefaces.

Jon

 

[PRmerger]

Source where Luther said this.
Read Luther’s prefaces.

Jon

Source where Luther said what?

That purgatory doesn’t exist?
That Maccabees should not be part of the canon?

 

[JonNC]

Source where Luther said what?

That purgatory doesn’t exist?
That Maccabees should not be part of the canon?

It’s not that each book was rejected.

They were rejected in corporate.

Because of Maccabees and its reference to purgatory.

Thus, if Maccabees is wrong, all of the deuterocanon must be wrong.

 

[PRmerger]

It’s not that each book was rejected.

They were rejected in corporate.

Because of Maccabees and its reference to purgatory.

Thus, if Maccabees is wrong, all of the deuterocanon must be wrong.

I don’t think anyone here has proposed that Luther said that if Maccabees is wrong, all of the deuterocanon must be wrong.

 

[AmbroseSJ]

JonNC:

And as is usually the case with this subject, I’m not even defending Luther’s conclusions. I am merely pointing out that it isn’t doctrine that caused him to not hold them equal to the other books of the canon.

If that is the case, then what IS the reason for Luther throwing out those 7 books from the Sacred Canon of Scriptures of the undivided Christian Church for the previous 1000 years?

Was it because he was the foremost authority on Scripture to come along, overshadowing all of the infallible councils that proclaimed and confirmed the canon?

Was he sent by God to correct the mistaken undivided Christian Church?

Please tell us how a bad-tempered, bigotted, lowly monk from Germany has ANY right to second guess the undivided Christian Church after 1000 years.

 

[JonNC]

=AmbroseSJ;14353348]If that is the case, then what IS the reason for Luther throwing out those 7 books from the Sacred Canon of Scriptures of the undivided Christian Church for the previous 1000 years?

Well, first, he didn’t throw them out. In fact, his translation included all of them plus one. As to why he considered them less than the other books, read his prefaces. I quoted pasts of them here.

Was it because he was the foremost authority on Scripture to come along, overshadowing all of the infallible councils that proclaimed and confirmed the canon?

No more than others who held similar views. The fact is that prior to Trent Catholics had the liberty to hold views about the canon. See Cajetan, and numerous others.

Was he sent by God to correct the mistaken undivided Christian Church?

Other than for polemical reasons, why would you think his expressing his opinion on them was based on this?

Please tell us how a bad-tempered, bigotted, lowly monk from Germany has ANY right to second guess the undivided Christian Church after 1000 years.

Please tell us how you have the right to judge him? If you wish to have a conversation about the topic, perhaps you might want to exclude vitriol. Take note that I’ve made no derogatory statements about Catholic teaching or Catholics in general about the topic.

The Church has been divided regarding the canon since the beginning of the Church.

Jon

 

[JM3]

aquinasandmore.com/catholic-books/dissent-from-the-creed/sku/496

 

[HereticAmI]

If that is the case, then what IS the reason for Luther throwing out those 7 books from the Sacred Canon of Scriptures of the undivided Christian Church for the previous 1000 years?

Was it because he was the foremost authority on Scripture to come along, overshadowing all of the infallible councils that proclaimed and confirmed the canon?

Was he sent by God to correct the mistaken undivided Christian Church?

Please tell us how a bad-tempered, bigotted, lowly monk from Germany has ANY right to second guess the undivided Christian Church after 1000 years.

(1) The Eastern Orthodox Church would dispute your history re the unity, and for good reason.

(2) Luther was otherwise simply one in a long line of Jew-hating bigots. Some of your well-regarded saints were even more Jew-hating than he was, and so I wouldn’t really go there, but that’s just me.

(3) I also tend to think that personal interpretation can be an a-okay thing, since it stops me from ever believing in the absurd proposition that Mary was born and died a virgin. Your infallible leaders might want to ponder the meaning of: And God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth…” That’s the first divine command written in the Torah. Is, in fact, one’s first duty. Was stated to be such well before Jesus was born and there is no word in the NT that he disagreed with the notion. Is otherwise the entire point of having female and male in the first instance. Unfortunately, your infallible leaders are so distorted sexually, that they apparently believe that there is some moral taint that comes with and/or results from sexual relations in a marriage and so Mary must be the perpetual virgin lest she bear the taint of daring to heed the divine command and try to reproduce. And the world was a lot less full back then, by the way, at least in relation to today, and so greater the need to heed the divine command to be fruitful and multiply so as to fill the earth.

Next, there is that other insane notion of a limbo for the dead children who were never baptized. Please kindly refer your infallible leaders to this passage here: And as for your little ones, who you said would become a prey, and your children, who today have no knowledge of good or evil, they shall go in, to them I will give it, and they shall possess it. If you and/or your infallible leaders think that the "it’ is limited to some dirt that we call Israel/Palestine, well, then you and they are rather sadly mistaken. No need for any limbo for the little ones, and our children who do not yet know tov and ra’, as they don’t even have a duty to offer Jesus as sacrifice and/or otherwise repent. Here, try leading Leviticus 4.

Oh, and unlike St. John the Golden Voice, nay, make that St. John the Jew-hating bigot (one of the early ones), I do celebrate the Feast of Booths. As for why:

For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. Here indeed we groan, and long to put on our heavenly dwelling so that by putting it on we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we sigh with anxiety; not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.

That’s the Feast of Booths. Pity that some Jew-hating bigots, now more or less worshiped as saints in your church, couldn’t see that. And for the cruel irony of it, for how spiritually blind they were, our Jewish friends don’t see it either, meaning that the Jew-hating bigots have rather more in common with our Jewish friends than they ever began to contemplate. And so I celebrate the Feast of Booths, to both acknowledge my current circumstance and also express my hope, my faith, that the mortal will be swallowed up by life, and he who prepared me for this very thing is God, who has given me the Spirit as a guarantee.

Lastly, what do you mean by lowly? A carpenter’s son from that backwater called Galilee? That would indeed by lowly, on everyone’s terms.

 

[PRmerger]

(3) I also tend to think that personal interpretation can be an a-okay thing, since it stops me from ever believing in the absurd proposition that Mary was born and died a virgin.

Could you please explicate what you find so “absurd” about this?

Aren’t you a Christian?

Do you find it “absurd” that Mary was a virgin when she conceived Christ?

If not (and I certainly hope you don’t), then isn’t the fact that she remained a virgin wayyyyyyy less absurd than the initial proposition?

 

[JonNC]

(2) Luther was otherwise simply one in a long line of Jew-hating bigots. Some of your well-regarded saints were even more Jew-hating than he was, and so I wouldn’t really go there, but that’s just me.

Using the term “Jew-hating bigot” implies a modern connotation, as in anti-semitism. My understanding is this was not typically the case. Luther’s, and I believe other Christians at and before his time, disliked Jews based on the fact that they refused to convert. They erroneously were blamed for Christ’s crucifixion. This is not an excuse for the behavior and writings, but it is a clarification.

Regardless of the reason, holding people to modern sensibilities serves no good purpose. I find the criticism of no good use. We can point to the behaviors and learn from them, to be sure, but the insertion of the accusations by either side do not benefit the discussion. Here’s the fact: Christians of good will, of all varieties, reject the anti-Judaism of the past and the anti-Semitism of recent times.

Jon

 

[AmbroseSJ]

JonNC:

As to why he considered them less than the other books, read his prefaces. I quoted pasts of them here.

Yes. I understand what his supposed reasoning was. It does not address, however, his authority, either as a Scripture Scholar of note, or as one sent from God to correct His Church. One man’s opinion is just that. Even today the most impious Scripture Scholars will deny the authorship of Biblical books, their veracity, their canonicity, their lack of credibililty etc. etc. Yet even THEY do not remove them from the canon established by the Church (or in the case of Protestants Luther’s canon)

The fact is that prior to Trent Catholics had the liberty to hold views about the canon.

Even today Catholics are permitted “to hold views” about the canon. So what? Do you mean that Catholics must hold the canonical books as being inspired? And only since the Council of Trent? If so, that is where you err. The Council of Trent REAFFIRMED the canon as already accepted for the previous thousand years.

Please tell us how you have the right to judge him? If you wish to have a conversation about the topic, perhaps you might want to exclude vitriol. Take note that I’ve made no derogatory statements about Catholic teaching or Catholics in general about the topic.

I don’t understand how my comments about a historical figure’s behavior equates to derogatory statements about Catholic teaching or Catholics in general.

You have yourself, in the past, in these forums, distanced yourself and the LCMS from Luther in many instances as being injudicious at best or downright embarrassing at worst.

 

[JonNC]

=AmbroseSJ;14357486]Yes. I understand what his supposed reasoning was. It does not address, however, his authority, either as a Scripture Scholar of note, or as one sent from God to correct His Church. One man’s opinion is just that. Even today the most impious Scripture Scholars will deny the authorship of Biblical books, their veracity, their canonicity, their lack of credibililty etc. etc. Yet even THEY do not remove them from the canon established by the Church (or in the case of Protestants Luther’s canon)

he had the same authority as anyone to have an opinion about individual books and the canon. He expressed that opinion. That’s all he did.

Even today Catholics are permitted “to hold views” about the canon. So what? Do you mean that Catholics must hold the canonical books as being inspired? And only since the Council of Trent? If so, that is where you err. The Council of Trent REAFFIRMED the canon as already accepted for the previous thousand years.

No truly ecumenical council set a canon, which is why there are variations in the Eastern sees.

I don’t understand how my comments about a historical figure’s behavior equates to derogatory statements about Catholic teaching or Catholics in general.

You have yourself, in the past, in these forums, distanced yourself and the LCMS from Luther in many instances as being injudicious at best or downright embarrassing at worst.

Your comments had nothing to do with the topic, and you know it. They were akin to the kinds of ad hominem comments I see on social media against the Catholic Church, which I find myself having to regularly refute.

 

[steido01]

Yes. I understand what his supposed reasoning was.

It’s apparent you do not.

It does not address, however, his authority, either as a Scripture Scholar of note, or as one sent from God to correct His Church.

Luther never claimed to be the latter; every one of the former has the duty to God to correct those in the church when they lead her into error.

One man’s opinion is just that.

Which is exactly what Luther said, if you actually read his commentaries:

Though this epistle of St. James was rejected by the ancients, I praise it and consider it a good book, because it sets up no doctrines of men but vigorously promulgates the law of God. However, to state my own opinion about it, though without prejudice to anyone, I do not regard it as the writing of an apostle, and my reasons follow…

[Then follow academic reasons not dissimilar to Jerome’s, Erasmus’ and Cardinal Cajetan]

…Therefore, I cannot put him among the chief books, though I would not thereby prevent anyone from putting him where he pleases and estimating him as he pleases; for there are many good sayings in him.

 

[pablope]

The Church has been divided regarding the canon since the beginning of the Church.

Jon

Well…there was the persecution for the first 300 years…so the Church could not come together for a while…the canon for a list of readings for the Divine Liturgy probably was not of the utmost concern…

But after 397…there was pretty much agreement on a canon of readings…catholicbridge.com/catholic/orthodox/why_orthodox_bible_is_different_from_catholic.php

To “start the ball rolling” on this, Pope Damasus promoted a Biblical canon which was a synthesis of the canon of the city-church of Rome and that of the city-church of Alexandria --the two leading city-churches of the universal Church. Damasus then turned this proposed canon over to the bishops of North Africa for analysis and debate. And he did this for four reasons:

1. North Africa had the most bishops per capita of anywhere in the universal Church at the time, so they would reflect a good sample of universal opinion among the bishops.

Now, this was modified somewhat when, at both the Byzantine Council of Trullo (692) and the Ecumenical Council of Nicaea II (787), both the church of Constantinople and the church of Antioch (along with Rome and Alexandria) recognized the binding canons of the Council of Carthage (397). This of course included the Carthaginian Biblical canon, which is thus TECHNICALLY binding on the modern Eastern Orthodox Church.