Reformationist said:
Is it your contention that the Catholic church developed the approved body of authoritative works or that they acknowledged the authority of an already established body of work?
Ha! Good... good. We have a nice little debate here. Without the Church, you would simply have hundreds of letters and books to reference. The body of work existed in the sense that the chapters were already written, but which chapters would be accepted was left to the RCC. So setting me up with two (implied to be mutually exclusive) options is not going to work. Also, it is fair to say the Church developed many of those works, since the RCC claims direct descension from the original Apostles, who themselves wrote much of the NT. (I'm sure you are throwing your computer across the room in disgust right now
)
Reformationist said:
So the authority and infallibility of Holy Scripture is dependent upon the authority and infallibility of the Catholic church???!!!
Scary, isn't it? I would specifically say that it is dependent in so far as the Church chose which works were indeed inspired by God. These books didn't have Jesus' signature on them, or glow with the holy spirit... they were read over... prayed over... argued over, and finally either accepted or rejected. Some authority had to do that, and it was arguably the authority of the Church that Jesus established - the only authority that existed before the Bible.
And by the way, what did people do before the Church canonized the Bible? And I'm not talking before 400 A.D., I'm talking before the printing press in the 1,600s. Before and well after the Bible came to be, was Christianity based on so many letters being passed around? Did Jesus not establish his Church on Peter, and pass the authority of God on earth to the Apostles? Did he not say the Church would last forever... that at no time would it not be? The Universalist church down the street opened in 1998. Did the authority that God left to us end at the death of the Apostles, leaving us to fend for ourselves? Or did they pass that authority on to Joe Somebody down the street to establish his own authority and ideas, independent from Sam Anybody who also claimed authority next door?
Or perhaps Christianity was nurtured in a womb of non-authority? If so, how did the Catholic Church even come to be the sole voice of Christianity until Luther... 1,500 years after Christ?
Reformationist said:
Wow. The Bible is given to substantiate the Catholic church's authority? Wow. I don't even know what to say to that except that I truly feel sorry for you.
Please, don't feel sorry for me. I appreciate your concern. I'll be alright.
=Reformationist said:
Just out of curiosity, where did you regurgitate this number from?
Would you be more comfortable with 40,000? Or is 5,000 enough for you? I can use either without losing my point.
You poor, misguided person. Accepting the Bible as authoritative means that I trust in God's sovereign ability to impart the Truth to me.
Ok, now you're spiraling into personal attacks. No offense taken though. So, do you deny the RCC's role in imparting that truth to you? Totally fine if you do, but maybe you could articulate exactly what function the Church performed in this case? If not for the Catholics keeping the Bible safe for so long, we wouldn't even
have a Bible today.
=Reformationist said:
"Her field manual?" Man, I don't know that I've EVER heard anything so man centered in all my life. When the phrase "Word OF God" is used it doesn't denote just that God is the subject of the Gospel. It is a possesive indicating that God is the Subject AND Author of the Gospel. It means the Word is FROM God. It's HIS "field manual."
You are thinking of this debate in terms of the Bible being the first and sole authority of God. You forget that the Roman Catholic Church is the only church in the world that has survived since Christ, and it is the only Church that claims direct and sole authority from Christ (via Peter and the Apostles). It was the only Christian institution around before the Bible, and it was the agent directly responsible for receiving God's word and then imparting the gospels to the people. Do you think that 5,000 people per day converted to Christianity based on the Acts of Andrew and other random readings, or was there a tradition in place, preceding the written word, that organized and shepharded that faith? Documents were painfully expensive and handwritten. They were as rare as a literate person back then. The Word was spread through tradition... not much room to argue there, but I welcome your ideas.
=Reformationist said:
Invader Pichu, I truly pray that you acknowledge and submit to the authority of the Gospel as being the authority of God Himself and, as such, clearly binding upon God's creation. That authority comes from the Supreme Authority, not from man.
And I would hope that you do not have the same emotional blocks and fuzzy history as many of our Protesting brethren.
=Reformationist said:
de Unamuno, before you make the erroneous claim that the hiarchy of your church has the authority of God, let me save you some time. The hiarchy of your church are created, and thus fallible. While I understand that there are numerous accounts in the Gospel, most significantly Moses, who were fallible beings with the authority of their God given station, even Moses was subordinate to the Creator. If the Gospel's authority is dependent upon your church's authority then it is useless to us. However, since the Lord Himself puts His "stamp of approval" upon it by bearing witness to our heart of Its Truth, the purpose of the church's authority serves only to confirm that authority, not establish it.
The problem with this whole debate is that you do not recognize the Catholic Church's original and scriptural claim to receiving the infallible grace of Christ to shephard his empire on this earth. I would strongly suggest to anyone that they spend some time catching up on Christian history, as well as the history of the Bible, so they can at least make the judgement call for themselves.
Here is a great piece that was recently posted on another thread . God bless, Reformationist, and keep up the good discourse. Your reasoning is valid and well thought out. Something we don't find everyday here.
My ultimate goal here is not to undermine other faiths. The Catholic Church believes that all Christians have God's grace. I simply want to expose what I see to be a general ignorance of history and to spark interest in researching for oneself the Christian's great and noble past.
In Him,
