i think i understand... but wasnt the Church in sacred tradition almost always guided by one council... patriarch... or something...
like if a protestant wanted to read the bible in light of sacred tradition wouldnt they have to ask themselves which tradition...? and wouldnt that in large part be determined by their own thoughts and prejudices... how do protestants make these kinds of decisions while still making sure they are not just subscribing to what they want to believe about God and not what is actually true... as in following their own desires?
i think two things that very often surprise me are universalism and homosexuality... i remember watching an advertisement about a church that did not condemn homosexuality because they love everybody... (and im not a homophobe... i just believe universalism (to some extent) is not biblical, and that homosexuality (to a great extent) is a sin like any other) so how do protestants know that they are not following a tradition just because it tells them what they want to hear and is still grounded in scripture... just erroneously...
im sorry if that does not make sense... i am having a difficult time expressing myself
gracias
annette
Annette,
Thanks again for your thoughtful questions.
I would not tie the word sacred to the word tradition. I have high regard for tradition, but not the same way that Rome does.
Lets look at just one tradition. The Bible. There are a number of books that are called Apocrypha by Protestants and Deuterocanonical by Roman Catholics. The Roman Catholics at Trent (16th century) declared that these books were Canon and used "tradition" as part of the reason for that. But there is a problem tradition does not agree with the Roman Catholic position. There had been for 1500 years godly men in the Church on either side of that argument. Important Early Church Fathers like St. Mileto, Rufinus, St. Jerome held to what is now the Protestant view of these books. St. Augustine and others held to the modern Catholic view.
Even one of Luthers chief opponents and defenders of the RCC during the Reformation (this is pryor to Trent), Cardinal Cajetan, held to the views of St. Jerome. The good Cardinal wrote
the following words to his commentary on the Old Testament, which was published in 1532. He said “Here we close our commentaries on the historical books of the Old Testament. For the rest (that is, Judith, Tobit, and the books of Maccabees) are counted by St. Jerome out of the canonical books, and are placed amongst the Apocrypha, along with Wisdom and Ecciesiasticus, as is plain from the Protogus Galeatus. Nor be thou disturbed, like a raw scholar, if thou shouldest find anywhere, either in the sacred councils or the sacred doctors, these books reckoned as canonical. For the words as well of councils as of doctors are to be reduced to the correction of Jerome. Now, according to his judgment, in the epistle to the bishops Chromatius and Heliodorus, these books (and any other like books in the canon of the Bible) are not canonical, that is, not in the nature of a rule for confirming matters of faith. Yet, they may be called canonical, that is, in the nature of a rule for the edification of the faithful, as being received and authorised in the canon of the Bible for that purpose. By the help of this distinction thou mayest see thy way clearly through that which Augustine says, and what is written in the provincial council of Carthage."
Of course Trent rejected the position of this good Dr. of the Church, whn it reacted against the Protestant cause.
Tradition, like the Protestant beliefs, is not always an easy thing to nail down. Rome often talks about the unanimous teachings of the Fathers, but the fathers are far from unanimous on a numbe rof issues that Rome has declared them to all be of one accord.
The RCC has, on occassions like Trent, thrown out the beliefs of whole swaths of the earlier Church, when it has made some of its more modern pronouncements.
It is a bit more complicated on all sides, even though many folks on boths sides don't realise this to be true.
In Christ,
Kenith
Ps. If you want to know more about the Canon you may find this thread interesting:
Those other books: Apocrypha or Deuterocanonical ?
