B
benhur
Guest
What did Peter finally rely on to interpret the most important question put to him ?
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Jubilarian
Guest
You answered my question with a question. Please tell me how you interpret scripture.
B
benhur
Guest
OK. We are to be “disciples”, to do or be like the apostles. So like Peter, who had to interpret who Jesus was from a mix of Jewish magisterium, rabbis, parents, tradition, Scripture, popular opinion, personal experience (with Jesus) (name removed by moderator)ut, reason is enlightened by the Father, as in divine revelation, as in the Paraclete. There is no other way to interpret properly or even to accept proper interpretation than by His grace and Spirit. You can read scripture all day long or be in the best church or follow the right tradition or go to the best of theological schools or even hang around Jesus (well the best of Christians) and be stone cold spiritually dead. *One must be born again and have His illumination on any matter *. We must have His mind we are told. The Spirit discerns all things.
B
benhur
Guest
Nor can it be said of the JW’s, and a few others.
B
benhur
Guest
Perhaps, but very dependent in how one defines a healthy church. For sure the CC was at a very weak stage of her history before the reformation. The church has always had dissension. Can one show for instance the health of German church, German people thru out the centuries, before and after Luther ? Is Christianity stronger in a Catholic Spain than say a Protestant England ? Or Italy to Greece ? Or Venezuela to Texas ? Proof is in the pudding.
J
Jubilarian
Guest
Is there a different Holy Spirit in each Protestant denomination that interprets scripture differently?
Did Peter find “the way the truth and the life” (one truth) or several ways, truths and lives?
I
Isaiah45_9
Guest
The same way the vast majority of Catholics do.
Do you know how many verses are officially interpreted by the Catholic Church?
And if you do,
Which are they? and What is their interpretation?
From actual authoritative Catholic Sources, please. No blogs or individual opinions.
B
benhur
Guest
God spoke to Adam and Eve and they to Cain and Abel . Was God wrong or the parents wrong in the method of illumination/talking, for they were contradicted? Does one determine Truth or the method of it’s conveyance upon numbers or outcomes ? Have we not said here, by C’s, that if they were the only ones left believing ,they would still remain Catholic ? Judas heard and saw the same as Peter, so was the Lord’s, even the Father’s methodology wrong ?
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Faithdancer
Guest
You already quoted my answer to that question.
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Faithdancer
Guest
I don’t see the problem.
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Jubilarian
Guest
The subject was the interpretation of scripture( the written word) not what is passed down orally or through tradition. You switched the discussion. However your reply strongly supports the reason why Catholics hold tradition equally with scripture.
I will ask the question again. How do you as a Protestant interpret scripture? Do Luterans for example have a different truth than Methodists since they interpret scripture differently?
J
Jubilarian
Guest
I see that you didn’t understand the question. Catholics universally interpret scripture by one authority. Protestants don’t have one authority. If they did, there would not be discrepencies from church to church about scripture. You can understand that problem, correct?
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Randy_Carson
Guest
And that is why you are still Protestant.
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Randy_Carson
Guest
As Jubilarian points out, it is not a matter of “how many verses are officially interpreted by the Catholic Church?” (The answer is only about seven or so, if I remember correctly.)
The question is: When a Catholic exercises his or her limited private judgment when reading and interpreting the meaning of scripture, by what standard does he or she measure whether that interpretation is correct?
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PRmerger
Guest
And when a Protestant exercises her private judgment when reading and interpreting the meaning of Scripture, but what standard does she measure whether that interpretation is correct?
The answer can only be one thing: when the interpretation conforms to her own person ideations.
C
chero23
Guest
That’s right. Its like this former Pentecostal pastor from Puerto Rico said, “my notion (my church) was just one of many. There were other good and well intention Christian brethren who say be inspired by the Holy Spirit, yet they proclaim a different teaching than what I did”.
That eventually lead hi to Catholicism.
T
Topper17
Guest
Hi, Fd,
Those who bear his name today have rejected Luther’s early teaching on Sola Scriptura and the right of the individual to (correctly) interpret Scripture under the guidance of the Holy Spirit (SS+PI). We should see this as additional evidence that Luther was wrong in his prosecution of his ‘reformation’. If Lutherans refute the teachings about ‘authority’ that Luther ‘used’ to refute the authority of the Church, then he MUST have been wrong.
As we have learned, it was during those fateful years before 1525 that Luther taught SS+PI. After that he began to more and more replace the Private Interpretation of all with his own personal authority. For anyone interested in the details of this ‘transformation’, Lutheran Professor Robert Kolb has written an excellent book on Luther’s Authority – “Martin Luther as Prophet, Teacher, and Hero”.
Western Christendom would be much, much different if Luther started out in 1517 teaching what he eventually came to believe and teach.
**"Luther was indeed one of ‘the Reformers,’ whose proposals triggered lasting schism in the Western Church. **Whether he would have pressed his convictions in quite the same way had he been able to look further into the future, we cannot know.” Lutheran Professor Robert W. Jenson, in “Cambridge Companion to Martin Luther”, pg. 272
Wow! That’s quite an admission from a Lutheran Scholar. It seems to be far more than can be admitted here. Luther himself recognized the problems associated with his ‘reforming’ agenda, but not until too late.
“As internal liberty varies (other things equal) with external security,** Protestantism, during its safe period, indulged in the sectarian fragmentation that seemed inherent in the principles of private judgment and the supremacy of conscience. Already in 1525, Luther wrote: ‘There are nowadays almost as many sects and creeds are there are heads.’ Melanchthon was kept busy moderating his master and finding ambiguous formulas for reconciling contradictory certitudes. Catholics gleefully pointed gleefully to the mutually recriminating Protestant factions, and predicted that freedom of interpretation and belief would lead to religious anarchy, moral disintegration and skepticism abominable to Protestants as well as Catholics.” **Carroll, pg. 441
Just exactly how accurate were those predictions? The answer – extremely – but then they were only common sense.
Luther himself questioned whether he was doing the ‘right thing’, yet it seems very ‘unpopular’ in certain circles to question whether he was right today.
It certainly didn’t take long for Luther’s teaching on SS+PI to have a deadly effect on Christian unity.
“Since approximately 1522 Luther had also been confronted by Catholics of a new sort, who were no longer seeking to defend the claims and privileges of Rome primarily by means of canon law; they argued on the basis of Scripture and were honest and earnest when the advocated traditional forms of piety. It was from their ranks that the reproached stemmed: considering the testimony of so many generations, how can Luther purport to know better? Then there were the princes, knights, peasants, and officials who were abusing the Gospel (Luther’s) for their own purposes. What had once been the monopoly of the pope and curia was now being done by people everywhere under the guise of “Evangelical freedom”. Finally there was the attack from his own ranks: the followers of the Reformation fell out over the question of the Eucharist. It was all too much: ‘As if it were not enough that the pope, emperor, princes, bishop, and the whole world hated me: now my brothers are turning against me.’” Oberman, pg. 317
Here we have additional evidence that within only a couple of years of Luther’s teaching of SS+PI, already he was being challenged doctrinally by ‘other Protestants’. All of this begs the question as to whether Luther was right or wrong to teach SS+PI. The question haunted Luther.
**“With how much pain and labor did I scarcely justify my conscience that I alone should proceed against the Pope, hold him for the Antichrist and the bishops for his apostles. How often did my heart punish me and reproach me with this strong argument: ‘Are you alone wise?’ Could all the others err and have erred for a long time. How if thou errest and leadest into error so many people who would be damned forever? ” **Martin Luther, letter to the Augustinians in Wittenberg, Nov 25, 1521.
Here we see Luther worrying that people could be led to damnation by following his teachings. Do we think he was right to worry about this or is this just another of the long list of things he was wrong about?
God Bless You Fd, Topper
I don’t think that anybody knows anybody out of the 2.2 billion Christians who refer to themselves as their “own pope”. However, there are hundreds of millions who actually function as their own Pope, establishing their doctrinal beliefs on the basis of their own Personal Interpretation, exactly as Martin Luther taught for the first 7 or 8 years of his Reformation. Of course, nobody would be so bold or arrogant to make that claim (to be their own pope), but I think we need to explore the depth of arrogance which resulted in the teaching of PI in the 16th century.
Those who bear his name today have rejected Luther’s early teaching on Sola Scriptura and the right of the individual to (correctly) interpret Scripture under the guidance of the Holy Spirit (SS+PI). We should see this as additional evidence that Luther was wrong in his prosecution of his ‘reformation’. If Lutherans refute the teachings about ‘authority’ that Luther ‘used’ to refute the authority of the Church, then he MUST have been wrong.
As we have learned, it was during those fateful years before 1525 that Luther taught SS+PI. After that he began to more and more replace the Private Interpretation of all with his own personal authority. For anyone interested in the details of this ‘transformation’, Lutheran Professor Robert Kolb has written an excellent book on Luther’s Authority – “Martin Luther as Prophet, Teacher, and Hero”.
Western Christendom would be much, much different if Luther started out in 1517 teaching what he eventually came to believe and teach.
**"Luther was indeed one of ‘the Reformers,’ whose proposals triggered lasting schism in the Western Church. **Whether he would have pressed his convictions in quite the same way had he been able to look further into the future, we cannot know.” Lutheran Professor Robert W. Jenson, in “Cambridge Companion to Martin Luther”, pg. 272
Wow! That’s quite an admission from a Lutheran Scholar. It seems to be far more than can be admitted here. Luther himself recognized the problems associated with his ‘reforming’ agenda, but not until too late.
“As internal liberty varies (other things equal) with external security,** Protestantism, during its safe period, indulged in the sectarian fragmentation that seemed inherent in the principles of private judgment and the supremacy of conscience. Already in 1525, Luther wrote: ‘There are nowadays almost as many sects and creeds are there are heads.’ Melanchthon was kept busy moderating his master and finding ambiguous formulas for reconciling contradictory certitudes. Catholics gleefully pointed gleefully to the mutually recriminating Protestant factions, and predicted that freedom of interpretation and belief would lead to religious anarchy, moral disintegration and skepticism abominable to Protestants as well as Catholics.” **Carroll, pg. 441
Just exactly how accurate were those predictions? The answer – extremely – but then they were only common sense.
Luther himself questioned whether he was doing the ‘right thing’, yet it seems very ‘unpopular’ in certain circles to question whether he was right today.
It certainly didn’t take long for Luther’s teaching on SS+PI to have a deadly effect on Christian unity.
“Since approximately 1522 Luther had also been confronted by Catholics of a new sort, who were no longer seeking to defend the claims and privileges of Rome primarily by means of canon law; they argued on the basis of Scripture and were honest and earnest when the advocated traditional forms of piety. It was from their ranks that the reproached stemmed: considering the testimony of so many generations, how can Luther purport to know better? Then there were the princes, knights, peasants, and officials who were abusing the Gospel (Luther’s) for their own purposes. What had once been the monopoly of the pope and curia was now being done by people everywhere under the guise of “Evangelical freedom”. Finally there was the attack from his own ranks: the followers of the Reformation fell out over the question of the Eucharist. It was all too much: ‘As if it were not enough that the pope, emperor, princes, bishop, and the whole world hated me: now my brothers are turning against me.’” Oberman, pg. 317
Here we have additional evidence that within only a couple of years of Luther’s teaching of SS+PI, already he was being challenged doctrinally by ‘other Protestants’. All of this begs the question as to whether Luther was right or wrong to teach SS+PI. The question haunted Luther.
**“With how much pain and labor did I scarcely justify my conscience that I alone should proceed against the Pope, hold him for the Antichrist and the bishops for his apostles. How often did my heart punish me and reproach me with this strong argument: ‘Are you alone wise?’ Could all the others err and have erred for a long time. How if thou errest and leadest into error so many people who would be damned forever? ” **Martin Luther, letter to the Augustinians in Wittenberg, Nov 25, 1521.
Here we see Luther worrying that people could be led to damnation by following his teachings. Do we think he was right to worry about this or is this just another of the long list of things he was wrong about?
God Bless You Fd, Topper
I
Isaiah45_9
Guest
Explain how I did not understand the question, please.
This is very naive.
Catholics universally interpret scripture in the same manner any other Christian does. Unless, you can provide us with a Magisterium Bible Verse Hotline where we can call an get the correct interpretation for a verse we are looking.
I cannot count the amount of Bible studies and other Catholic activities I have participated in. Whenever I brought up, Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, Polycarp, almost any other Church Father, practically not a single person knew who I was talking about. Further, not a single person could appropriately use the CCC in regards to the verse being discussed at the moment. That is the universallly Catholic. Ignorance of Scripture, Ignorance of the CCC, Ignorance of the Magisterium. Other than us, know it all wannabes, not a single Catholic can properly present the Church’s position on the vast majority of matters.
IOW, they personally interpret scriptures.
You avoided my question. How many verses are officially interpreted by the Catholic Church? Authoritative sources please.
G
GaryTaylor
Guest
USCCB, we interpret different than you. Mary didn’t die in the Bible. Is that naive?
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Randy_Carson
Guest
Are Orthodox in any better position to exercise their private judgment as required by the receptivity theory? I doubt it.
However, Catholics practice limited private judgment, not absolute private judgment. If you know the difference, then this answer is sufficient. If you do not, then it would be worth spending an evening or two doing some homework.
The Catholic Church has not set out to “officially interpret” ANY verses. So, there is no “official” list of them. However, over the years, half a dozen verses have been used in the documents of Councils and ex cathedra statements, etc as to be unmistakably interpreted. Scholars have identified these, so you can know the answer if you want, but it will not come on Vatican letterhead as you have requested.
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