Anglo-Catholics and Evangelical Anglicans Together: Part 2; Divine Revelation

I would put it that the Church has authority to set limits on the range of interpretation of Holy Scripture.  So, we can allow infant baptism, but not require it.  However, we cannot deny the physical resurrection of Jesus without going beyond what the Church allows to be taught.  We can say that the bread and wine become the Body and Blood and may come up with interesting theories as to how this happens, but we cannot say that any one of those theories is the “right” one.

When it comes to interpretation, I believe that we have a false dichotomy.  Is scripture to be interpreted alone or as a community of faith?  My answer is “Yes!”  We need the Church to fully understand Holy Scripture, but we also need to read it privately and to work to understand it both privately and corporately.

YBIC,
Phil Snyder

Thanks for this Matt. You have revealed myself to me.

I was confused with all the talk about Anglo-Catholic, Evangelical and so forth. Growing up such designations didn’t exist to my knowledge. We were just Episcopalians.

I know now I’m evangelical not just old church.

Matt,

Historically, I think there is a real difference between Roman Catholics and Anglo-Catholics on the question of the relationship between Scripture and Tradition.  IMHO, the best critique ever written of John Henry Newman’s notion of the development of doctrine was that written by J.B. Mozley—The Theory of Development. A Criticism of Dr. Newman’s Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. (1879).  Mozley was an Anglo-Catholic, and Newman’s brother-in-law!

If you can find a copy of this book through ABE Books or elsewhere, please read it.  I have yet to see any acknowledgment of awareness of this book among our formerly Episcopalian friends who have recently crossed the Tiber. It is definitive.

“I pray that anglo-catholic friends reading this article will be able to supply what is, admittedly, lacking in my explanation.”

For now, this is all I can offer. Again, this is from Francis Hall. I feel he very clearly sets out his arguments. I have copies of much of his material at home and I will try to find what he has to say about tradition specifically when I get off of work this evening. In the mean time I refer those who are interested to the following link.

http://disseminary.org/hoopoe/dogma/2005/07/ch_iii_q_14_bib.html

Hall says in paragraph 7:

“7. The Sacred Scriptures were written from the point of view of God’s Kingdom, and for the members of it; and their general purpose is to establish and strengthen them in the doctrine which they have learned or are able to learn in that Kingdom. The Bible is not the source of truth for God’s Kingdom, for the Church’s possession of it is more ancient than the Bible, and was derived from direct revelation. Yet the Bible contains all saving doctrine, and must be found to prove what the Church teaches. It is often the means, also, by which individuals discover the true religion. The Church and the Bible are both necessary. Both are Divine and we may not separate or mutually oppose them in our study of Theology.”

If you go to the link you will find much more.

I try to keep in mind also that Jesus is the perfect and final revelation of God (via Hebrews mind you) and God has given us both the Church and Scripture as witnesses to that final revelation of the God-Man.

Mozley:
http://www.bookfinder.com/search/?ac=sl&st=sl&qi=ExR3hVFLFDUSew0MXDsackg,RDU_7126718426_1:82:433

Thank you Bill and thank you for the link hollytc

Thank-you, Matt, for another helpful and irenic contribution to the dialogue. In your treatment of the Catholic position toward scripture, you lean heavily toward citing Roman sources, for understandable reasons, since there is no single recognized authoritative source for an Anglican Catholic position. Where I suspect most Anglo-Catholics would diverge from the Roman train of thought is in the idea that there are two distinct sources of infallible revelation. Speaking personally, this is not a notion I would own. My sense is that Anglo-Catholics are comfortable talking about scripture as the uniquely normative font of special revelation, and the Church (broadly speaking, certainly not a single province thereof, and in which category I would subsume “tradition”) as the uniquely normative interpreter of scripture, such that, rather than functioning as two independent sources, they work together in—dare I suggest it?—a sort of hypostatic union. Scripture and Tradition are not one and the same (“monophysitism”) but neither can they be too neatly separated (“euthychianism”).  It is such a hermeneutic that protects scripture from the likes of a Charles Taze Russell, who constructed the cult of Jehovah’s Witnesses from a reading of scripture “untainted” by tradition. Reading the Bible isn’t quite in the category of “don’t try this at home.” Literate Christians should read the Bible as part of their devotional lives. But they should always do so in the context of the life—particularly the liturgical life—of the Church. It is the Church, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, that settled on the canon of scripture. The Bible is, first and foremost, “the Church’s book.” I quote now from Vernon Staley’s The Catholic Religion: A Manual of Instruction for Members of the Anglican Communion (1893):
The Bible is the child of the Church, and it is wrong as it is impossible to separate one from the other. If the scriptures contain the truth, the Church is the “pillar and ground” (I Tim. 3:15) upon which the truth rests. (1) The Church wrote the inspired books which form the Bible, (2) The Church separated the inspired books from other writing, (3) The Church alone can rightly interpret the Bible. (1983 edition, p. 199)

Yet, Staley has a high view of inspiration that would warm the heart of any evangelical:
The Holy Spirit inspired the writers of the Bible, filling their minds with the truths which He willed to be made known, and impelling them to write them down. (p. 193)
For what it’s worth, from what I know of the Eastern Orthodox understanding, this is is roughly how they would read it as well.

<blockquote> I believe that there is some difference between anglo-catholics and Roman Catholics with regard to the question of the infallibility of the teaching office vis a vis the scriptures but I am not quite sure where that difference lies. I pray that anglo-catholic friends reading this article will be able to supply what is, admittedly, lacking in my explanation</blockquote>

I believe your last article revealed a little bit about why I claimed most were Protestant and didn’t know it. When it was written that an Anglo-Catholic certainly didn’t hold to “every little bit of doctrine or dogma”—well in RC circles this can get you excommunicated if you violate official teaching (much more structured).

In some sense Anglo-Catholic end up like EO. EO must hold to the first seven councils (if there’s a need the Church will hold another, so far no need in the last millennium), then tradition is river with strong current from Church fathers, one which is very hard to swim against. Thus perpetual virginity of Mary is not required belief, but EO apologist will still defend the doctrine (in RC circles, the magesterium has spoken). {Anglo-Catholics I’ve met tend to lean towards Protestant view of Mary, due to straight reading of Scripture}.

There is a reverence and respect given to priest and bishop, in some ways how liberals have been able to lead Anglo-Catholics astray—except where very tight order has been held on any movement from tradition (the WO issue—but not to side track this article, but those who felt that issue violated 2000 years of church teaching {the way they often phrase the debate, not a Scripture reference initially} have held fast on other issues using the same reasoning).

Interestingly liberal seem to desire magesterial authority (thus how “God is doing a new thing” and they are aware of it & ‘cooperating with the spirit’). Often many of my Anglo-Cath brethren are lead into error by the nature to give respect to the office. Those who are still fighting the other issue are able to hold much true today because priest, bishop, primate are still not allowed to swim against the current of 2000 years of Christian understanding.

I think it should be raised infallible means will not fail, inerrant means without error. Most evangelicals hold the Bible to be infallible and inerrant. Saying tradition (as the strong current river) is infallible does not necessarily mean inerrant, but will correct itself (more likely the Lord will correct) as to not to fail.

[Yesterday’s thread had may wonderful folks who all wrote they were Anglo-Catholic chime in, hopefully they be inspired to do again, it was wonderful to see the spectrum and felt a little less lonely].

——————————

Excellent article! Thank you, Matt. I hope this thread is a cordial as the other as we explore tense and often personal issues.

Many non-anglican evangelicals study and even revere the teachings of the early church fathers, so it cannot be the case that evangelicals reject the importance of tradition.  And I don’t know of any evangelicals who reject the doctrine of the Trinity, which is made explicit nowhere in Scriptures but is instead a traditional church teaching derived from Scriptures.  Likewise, there are certainly elements in the Nicene creed which derive from church interpretation of Scripture rather than directly from Scripture.  So I’m having trouble completely buying that most evangelicals would say that none of the traditional teaching of the church is divinely inspired and that they therefore would say that no part of tradition can be infallible. 

As far as I can tell, the real difference between Roman Catholics and evangelicals seems to be that Roman Catholics would say that traditional church teaching interpreting Scripture is divinely inspired. As a lawyer, I like the metaphor of saying the Scripture is the Constitution and traditional church teaching is the corpus of court cases interpreting the Constitution.  Court cases cannot (or are not supposed to!) overrule the plain meaning of the Constitution, and previously decided court cases have precedential value—they are considered authoritative in subsequent cases.  Roman Catholics would say, however, that earlier church interpretations of Scripture cannot be later overruled in the way the U.S. Supreme Court might one day overrule, say, Roe. v. Wade.  And no church teaching can overrule Scripture. 

I’m not sure that evangelical understanding of Scripture and its interpretation by the church is quite so different from the Catholic understanding as one might think.  The supporters of the recent innovations in the Episcopal Church have been calling their actions, “Prophetic.”  And the orthodox counter-argument, from both the evangelical and catholic side, has been, “Impossible.  True prophecy cannot contradict Scripture and traditional churhc teaching, both of which would condemn these innovations.”

Rick,

I took pains to note that evangelicals have a great deal of reverence for tradition and we certainly recognise that God speaks and reveals his truth through it. However, to be infallible means, well, that it never fails.

You say:

“So I’m having trouble completely buying that most evangelicals would say that none of the traditional teaching of the church is divinely inspired and that they therefore would say that no part of tradition can be infallible.” 

Certainly where the teaching tradition of the Church is in keeping with scipture it is true. Where it contradicts scripture, evangelicals would say it is untrue. Scripture is the lone infallible source. It does not and cannot err. Tradition, evangelicals say, can and sometimes does err.  No evangelical would or could embrace the infallibility of tradition without letting go of one of the core evangelical essentials, sola scriptura (which, by necessity, implies that there is no other infallible source) and ceasing, at that point, to be considered in the mainstream of evangelicalism.

Thank you for a pair of insightful and interesting articles.  I’ve always considered myself an evangelical Anglo-Catholic charistmatic.  Richard Hooker is of great help in understanding the classical Anglican thought around the relationship of Scripture and tradition.  I’ll throw out a few comments from Hooker’s “Lawes” (numbers are references to that work). 

For Hooker, to alter any long-standing tradition required more than just a perception of progress, “if it be a law which the custom and continual practise of many ages or years has confirmed in the minds of men, to alter it must need be troublesome and scandalous” (1:337.8-19). 

Hooker established a triad of authority, “What scripture doth plainly deliver, to that the first place both of credit and obedience is due; the next whereunto is whatsoever any man can necessarily conclude by force of reason; after these the voice of the Church prevails.  That which the Church by her ecclesiastical authority shall probably think and define to be true or good, must in congruity of reason overrule all other inferior judgments whatsoever.” (2:39.8-14)

Hooker does not offer a clear graduation of authority in the triad; although this interpretation is at times incorrectly applied in modern applications (note the oft used ‘Anglican Stool’ with three legs of equal length).  Rather, Hooker offers an equation in three variables: Scripture, force of reason, voice of the Church.  There is complex interaction between these variables which means that one aspect cannot be parsed off and dealt with in isolation.  While Scripture still holds the priority, any analysis using this model must hold all three variables in tension.  ‘Inferior judgments’ – the private opinions that the post-modern understand today to be the result of individual reason – are not part of the equation. 

Hooker’s model of authority was adopted by other powerful figures of post-reformation England, such as Anglican priest John Wesley (1703 – 1791).  Wesley’s own approach is summed up in the preface to “Sermons on Several Occasions”: “I then search after and consider parallel passages of Scripture…I meditate thereon with all the attention and earnestness of which my mind is capable.  If any doubt still remains, I consult those who are experienced in the things of God and then the writings whereby being dead they yet speak.”  It is apparent that Hooker’s trinity of Scripture, reason and tradition is made manifest here.  Wesley’s father wrote in Advice to a young Clergyman, “Hooker everyone knows, and his strength and firmness can hardly be too much commended; nor it there any great danger of his being solidly answered.”

Hooker has always stood, for me at least, as someone trying to bridge that protestant/catholic divide that characterises Anglicanism.

AMDG

A minor quibble: as someone probably more sympathetic to Fr. Martins’ position, I would caution against using Charles Russell as an example of the perils of private interpretation. His New World “translation” was produced with no knowledge of Greek or Hebrew, just some lexicons and a vivid imagination, the result of which were distortions and blatant corruptions of the original. His error wasn’t necessarily a consequence of a lack of tradition, but rather bad or non-existent scholarship coupled with his pre-existing ideological agenda.

So, Matt, would you say the doctrine of the Trinity is fallible or infallible?

So, Matt, would you say the doctrine of the Trinity is fallible or infallible?

Rick, here is one of the areas where I find Mozley quite helpful.

Mozley specifically addresses Newman’s criticism that classical Anglicans are inconsistent because they affirm the doctrine of the Trinity, but do not affirm either the Marian dogmas or the infallibility of the pope, none of which are found explicitly taught in Scripture, but rather come from tradition.

Mozley distinguishes between what I’d call Development A and Development B.

Development A are doctrines that are not specifically taught in Scripture but are necessary conclusions drawn from what is explicitly taught in Scripture.  Doctrines like the Trinity and the Chalcedonian formula would be examples of Development A.

Development B are doctrines that are not specifically taught in Scripture and are not necessary conclusions drawn from what is explicitly taught in Scripture.  The Marian Dogmas and papal infallibility would be examples of Development B.

Mozley argues that Newman commits a logical fallacy by failing to distinguish correctly between the two kinds of development.  Development B does not follow from the Church’s embrace of Development A.

So, according to Mozley, the Trinity, while not taught explicitly in Scripture, is nonetheless an infallible dogma because it is a necessary conclusion from what is explicitly taught in Scripture.

Karl Barth makes a similar kind of argument in his famous discussion of the Trinity in CD 1/1.

Rick, O.P.

Is this you? ->  http://anglicandominican.com/MeetUs.dsp

Rick OP

I would sort of agree with Mozley, but I would perhaps be a little stronger in the assertion that the doctrine of the trinity is pretty well developed in the scriptures to the point that the reason one formulation or articulation of the trinity won out over the others is because it was able to take in the full breadth of what the bible teaches:

1. There is only one God’
2. The Father is God, The Son is God and the Holy Spirit is God
3. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are distinct and personal

The best way to articulate this is through the doctrine of the trinity.

Thus, for evangelicals, the doctrine itself is True in an absolute sense but not true because it was articulated by the Church in council, but rather because it correctly articulates the infallible fullness of the biblical revelation above.

For that reason this teaching of the Church is to be embraced and celebrated just like any well articulated biblical doctrine.

Matt, another good starting point for discussion. I am noticing, though, a bit of a tendency in your articles to “overread” certain parts of the Roman Catholic Catechism. When you mention above that “Evangelicals (along with Roman Catholics…see 1:1:3:III paragraph 109 of the Catholic Catechism) believe the meaning of the text resides chiefly in the intent of the author,” this actually is not what paragraph 109 says. Rather it says that “the reader must be attentive to what the human authors truly wanted to affirm and to what God wanted to reveal to us by their words.” That single word truly creates a huge difference in comparison to what you said because it leads to several corollaries:

1) The intent of a given biblical passage may indeed be different from what is accomplished (i.e., the actual textual intention may look different from the final form the text took). An author’s intended meaning is not always what an author ends up saying.

2) Under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, a writer may say something different from which he himself intended to say due to the cultural, historical, and personal idiosyncrasies in which the author’s life and writing occur (para. 110). In other words, formal Roman Catholic teaching allows the sensitive use of the historical-critical method in biblical scholarship; texts are written in a given time and place that not only may, but must, impact their meaning. This historical context must be taken into account.

3) This is getting toward a profound point: an author may have an intention to say something, but his true intention was something guided by the Holy Spirit and so might be different from what he even thought he was doing. For instance, Roman Catholic teaching does not require that Isaiah intended to write prophecies about Jesus; indeed, Isaiah himself could say, “I didn’t mean that!” The Holy Spirit, however, had other true intentions behind the motivation of Isaiah’s prophetic words that are only realized later.

4) And this is straight from para. 111: “But since Sacred Scripture is inspired, there is another and no less important principle of correction interpretation. . . . ‘Sacred Scripture must be read and interpreted in the light of the same Spirit by whom it was written.’” This point is amplified by three criteria:
4a. Scripture must be read “attentive ‘to the the content and unity of the whole Scripture’” (112).
4b. Scripture must be read “within the living Tradition of the whole Church” (113).
4c. Scripture must be read “attentive to the analogy of faith” (114), i.e., to the coherence of Scripture with the deposit of faith and the plan of Revelation (and therefore, by the way, the doctrine of the Trinity is infallible in its fullest meaning, although as with Scripture, there is the possibility in any RC teaching that the human transmission of the teaching must be taken into account).

Long story short, all the work described here is required to get the authorial intention behind a given passage, which explains why the work of biblical interpretation is the work of the community of faith: we need one another to make sure all the bases are covered in the hard, hard work of interpreting Scripture authentically. It simply is not enough to know what Isaiah meant because we have to understand that in the context of an historical setting and in the context of what the Holy Spirit meant us to learn through how Isaiah told God’s story through a limited human vessel.

Also, in terms of the relation between Tradition and Scripture, the quotes you offer from para. 80-81 miss a crucial preface: Scripture and Tradition are two things in RC biblical studies, but they are not two deposits: they are “two distinct modes of transmission” of the Word of God, having “one common source” and “form one thing.” They are separate entities, but their source as revelation is the same, and they do not come from two separate deposits.

How does all this fit with an Anglo-Catholic perspective? I sure would love to know that myself!

Tom,

good corrective. I think in fact I would agree with all that the Catechism says on this and would in fact want to qualify what I wrote in the article on the basis of what you write above. The one quibble an evangelical would perhaps posit has to do with your point 3. It is certainly true that Isaiah may not have intended to say all that the Holy Spirit has said through him. But, at the same time, I would perhaps say that 1. what he did intend to say with regard to his own setting was certainly inspired by the Spirit and 2. the fact that he may have intended his words to apply to his own time, does not mean that the Spirit was working against his intent or in contradiction to his intent, it simply means that the Spirit applied his words beyond his intent…does this make sense?

Perhaps evangelicals are closer together on this particular point than I suggested in the article.

I could perhaps have said something like: Discerning intent of the author is the chief task of the exegete and this is where the meaning of the text is primarily located.

This does not cut out the possibility of the Spirit applying the authors words beyond but not against his intent.

Matt,
Another excellent topic.
You make the following statements in your discussion of the evangelical position:

Those in the room with Jesus that evening were given divine authority to infallibly teach and proclaim the very word of God.

While the Church does in fact receive revelation and guidance from the Holy Spirit she no longer possesses the capacity to speak or teach infallibly because the men to whom the promise was given have passed away. The post-apostolic Church is charged with expounding and applying the infallible Word of God transmitted through the apostles to the faithful in every age.

Divine Revelation is also addressed specifically in the Catholic Catechism:

Catechism of the Catholic Church, second edition
Chapter Two: God Comes to Meet Man
Article 1: The Revelation of God
III.
Christ Jesus—“Mediator and Fullness of All Revelation"25
God has said everything in his Word

65
“In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son.“26 Christ, the Son of God made man, is the Father’s one, perfect, and unsurpassable Word. In him he has said everything; there will be no other word than this one. St. John of the Cross, among others, commented strikingly on Hebrews 1:1-2:
In giving us his Son, his only Word (for he possesses no other), he spoke everything to us at once in this sole Word – and he has no more to say ... because what he spoke before to the prophets in parts, he has now spoken all at once by giving us the All Who is His Son. Any person questioning God or desiring some vision or revelation would be guilty not only of foolish behavior but also of offending him, by not fixing his eyes entirely upon Christ and by living with the desire for some other novelty.27
There will be no further Revelation

66
“The Christian economy, therefore, since it is the new and definitive Covenant, will never pass away; and no new public revelation is to be expected before the glorious manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ.“28 Yet even if Revelation is already complete, it has not been made completely explicit; it remains for Christian faith gradually to grasp its full significance over the course of the centuries.
67
Throughout the ages, there have been so-called “private” revelations, some of which have been recognized by the authority of the Church. They do not belong, however, to the deposit of faith. It is not their role to improve or complete Christ’s definitive Revelation, but to help live more fully by it in a certain period of history. Guided by the magisterium of the Church, the sensus fidelium knows how to discern and welcome in these revelations whatever constitutes an authentic call of Christ or his saints to the Church.

Christian faith cannot accept “revelations” that claim to surpass or correct the Revelation of which Christ is the fulfillment, as is the case in certain non-Christian religions and also in certain recent sects which base themselves on such “revelations.”

In the boxes above are what I would call the Evangelical & Catholic positions on “pre-Ascension divine revelation”. 

How is it then, that St. Paul’s “post-Ascension divine revelation” is accorded canonical status by both Evangelical and Catholics when he wasn’t one of those in the room when Jesus gave the apostles their divine authority, which expired with their death?  Why is St. Paul’s seemingly “private” revelation considered to be part of the deposit of faith when other revelations are not?

This has puzzled me for years and I have never been able to find a suitable explanation.  I accept it and fully acknowledge Paul’s sainthood, but wonder why revelation ceased with Paul and not Jesus.  If Jesus did it all, taught it all, revealed it all to His apostles, empowered them, anointed them with the spirit, why is Paul the exception to revelation being fulfilled in Christ?  Or does post Ascension revelation continue, guided by the Holy Spirit?  Is it possible we have missed something God has revealed to us in the past 2000 years?

It is circular reasoning to use scripture to explain and defend scripture, but it is what we have.  Jesus said He would build a church.  He said He would send the Holy Spirit.  Did He say He would inspire a closed text?  Did He say revelation would be complete with what Paul had to say to us?

Matt, as usual, you are very perceptive and gracious in your responses. You note:

I could perhaps have said something like: Discerning intent of the author is the chief task of the exegete and this is where the meaning of the text is primarily located.

This does not cut out the possibility of the Spirit applying the author’s words beyond but not against his intent.

I have one of two (or both) responses. First, the RC position would not deny the inspiration of Isaiah’s words as spoken to his own time; it merely does not rule out the possibility that the Holy Spirit might choose not to tell Isaiah his words would have a meaning greater than he himself would recognize (and thus, Isaiah might say that he did not intend a meaning that we as Church now see evident in his work).

Second, in terms of authorial intention, we might see from this side of the Resurrection that a biblical writer’s intent is never contradicted, but that does not mean he would not see a contradiction. To take a New Testament example, one might view Caiaphas’ statement in John, “[I]t is to your advantage that one man should die for the people, rather than that the whole nation should perish.” The Gospel tells us that “he was prophesying that Jesus was to die for the nation” and for all children of God and that “he did not speak in his own person” (John 11.49, 51). Clearly here at least, the Holy Spirit’s intended meaning speaks in direct contradiction to what Caiaphas thought himself to mean. And yet, this is clearly labeled prophecy, according to the Gospel itself.

Whether this applies to the interpretation of Scripture as a whole, I am not sure. Just a little thought thought to ponder. . . .

Clann Donald:

Yes.

Matt,

I should have said at the beginning that you have written an excellent and persuasive article and the discussion that has ensued has enlightened me further.  I appreciate the responses of William Witt and Matt, distinguishing the doctrine of the Trinity from other traditional catholic church taught doctrines.  But my point remains:  there are traditional church interpretations of Scripture such as the Trinity that evangelicals either accept as infallible, or accept so completely that they may as well consider the doctrine infallible.  And yes, I do agree with you Matt that evangelicals accept this doctrine of church tradition because it so plainly flows from any reasonable reading of the New Testament Scripture in toto, and not simply because it is a traditional teaching, even if it took early Christians a little while to arrive at this doctrine.  So there is a difference in the way catholics and evangelicals regard church tradition as a corpus of teaching, which is perhaps your point.

My own biases here stem from my ardent desire to be simultaneously evangelical and catholic. 

Thanks for this discussion.

Blessings.

The Mozley book referenced above is available on line at:

http://www.archive.org/details/theorydevelopmen00mozluoft

Hi Matt,

Interesting and thought provoking posts, thankyou, especially for the irenic approach.

A couple of observations.

Firstly, as an evangelical ‘insider’, I’m not sure how much a discussion like this can do justice to the breadth and diversity within Evangelicalism. Notoriously hard to define if not describe, Evangelicalism is not simply a theological system, or ‘party’, it is as much a hermeneutical approach or spirituality. I know what you are getting at when you write Charity demands that we consider a belief system through a careful study the official documents produced and endorsed by that system not on the basis of anecdote. However, that begs the question ‘which are the ‘official’ documents of Evangelicalism to compare and contrast with the Catechism? Interestingly you (in the reformed tradition), quote frequently from the Westminster Confession, but many evangelical bodies would not subscribe to that in its entirety. Same with the Lausanne Covenant, and the Chicago declarations, etc, or any other similar document. We can point to many evangelical confessions, but no definitive one, in the same way that the catechism is definitive for catholics.

Similarly I know what you mean when you write: There are indeed parts of the bible that remain in dispute and unclear (whether it is possible for infants to be baptized for example). These are important but not essential to salvation. Christians may dispute these sections and sometime divide institutionally because of them (as has been the case with infant baptism) but do not need to consider one another apostate over them.

But is it really that simple? What about the annihilationsism vs eternal damnation debate? that cuts to the heart of the nature of salvation.

As an Arminian Evangelical I would defend the possibility of losing ones salvation, as a Reformed Evangelical I expect you would disagree. Again, is this dispute which has run for centuries one in which the issues at hand can be described as ‘important’, but not essential to salvation’. I could go on - penal substitutionary atonement? Infallibility vs trustworthiness of the scriptures? the openness debate? There are self described evangelicals on all sides of these issues.

Given the increasing tendency (need?) to define exactly what kind of Evangelical one is - charismatic, reformed, arminian, conservative, open, broad, dispensational… many are wondering whether the term evangelical is still as useful as it once was. I know a self confessed ‘universalist evangelical’, and there are Evangelical groups supportive of same sex unions.

Given the breadth and diversity I’ve described I think the best we can hope for in this kind of a discussion is a comparison of the RC position and an evangelical postion. Or the Catholic position contrasted with the the postion of a certain constituency within Evangelicalism - i.e Conservative Evangelicals or Arminian Evangelicals.

Anselmic,

You are correct that I have chosen to focus on the Reformed aspect of protestantism and you are equally correct that protestantism is certainly a mixed bag. As Sarah stated on the first thread, I have chosed to address this from the perspective of Reformed thought because historically speaking that is the majority report in Anglican circles and this is the flavor of evangelicalism reflected in the 39 articles and the homilies. Since I was addressing anglicans I wanted to give voice to the primary evangelical strand in Anglicanism while certainly agreeing arminians have not been absent.

I would however differ with you regarding the extent of these differences. I was planning to cover this topic in my next article in this series on ecclessiology but let me address the topic partially here.

While evangelicalism is broad and veried historically you can identify several “evangelical essentials”. Among them are Sola Scriptura, Sola Fide, Sola Gratia, Sola Christi and Soli Deo Gloria. With these “sola’s” Calvinists and arminians agree. While there are certainly those within the emerging movement and “open theism movemnemt” who have sought and do seek to challenge these, they are generally considered heretics by evangelical leaders from the arminian side to the Calvinist side.

Tom Oden (arminian), JI Packer (Calvinist infant baptism), Norm Geisler (Arminian), RC Sproul (Calvinist no infant baptism), through they differ widely on a number of serious issues but they agree on the solas and on the essentials of evangelicalism, and consider one another brothers. But there are real defineable limits to evangelical orthodoxy and those seem to be centered on the sola’s. All would and have seriously opposed those who rise up to challenge the essentials and transgress the limits. Only the most extreme Calvinists or the most extreme arminians believe the disagreement between them to be essential to salvation.

RC Sproul can write “Chosen to Believe” and Norm Geisler can respond with “Chosen but Free” and engage in very serious and vigorous debate, but at the end of the day both men acknowledge that the other is not apostate…just wrong.

I think the debate surrounding Stott’s flirtation with Annihiliationism is a case in which the boundaries of these essentials were tested. Stott seemed to support the idea in his work “Evangelical Essentials” but the outcry from evangelicals of all stripes was so great that while not backing down from the possibility of annihiliationism, admitted that he was only flirting with the idea and would gladly embrace the wider evangelical community’s (or the ‘catholic’)understanding of damnation. He was seen to have transgressed the limits of evangelical orthodoxy and when called he stepped back from the brink.

There is, I suggest, a sort of organic ecclessiology, even “catholicism”, within evangelicalism that transcends denominational divisions. It permits evangelical leaders to exercise a form of discipline, even accross denominational lines

Moreover, I would not press the variations within evangelicalism to far in relation to Roman Catholicism or, especially, Orthodoxy. If you’ve ever been in the room when a Franciscan and Dominican get into it or a more liberal Jesuit and a more conservative Jesuit then you can see that the Roman church is not at all the monolith that it seems, sometimes, to protestants.

This is especially true of Orthodoxy. My doctor belongs to ROCOR, the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. ROCOR began when the Moscow Patriarchate was vacated in 1917 and replaced by a Soviet lackey. There were two Russian Orthodox churches. The Orthodox Church in America which is a “plant” of the official Moscow Patriarchate was seen for a few years as the enemy of ROCOR.  Now that ROCOR and Moscow are coming to terms, there is something of a reconciation. But my doctor’s parish is splitting from ROCOR because of it, still insisting that Moscow is vacant. The fight is as virulent as any between Arminians and Calvinists. Or, have you ever seen fight between an old calendar Orthodox and a new calendar Orthodox? These things can get scary.

And yet, at the same time, there are certainly essentials that define Orthodoxy even sans a real confessional document that applies to all Orthodox churches like the Catechism applies to all of Rome.

Do you see where I am going with this?

Not sure where the smiley came from in my post above? I was not trying to be flippant.

I do see where you are coming from, and my sympathies are with you. I appreciate your comments re the reformed tradition within Anglican Evangelicalism, though my perception of the UK scene is that this is no longer the ‘dominant’ flavour - I can’t speak for the US.

The problem as I see it, is that there is no single confession we can look to as the Evangelical statement of faith, to put on a par with the Catechism as upholding the official teaching of the movement as it were. No one doubts that there are varieties of opinions within Catholicism and Orthodoxy, (I read today that in the US 80% of priests think the pope is wrong on contraception, and 60% of them think he is wrong on homosexuality) though there is still the ‘title deeds’of the Catechism and the Councils of the undivided church which stand as the official teaching of these communions respectively though individual members may depart from it. The disputes within Eatern Orthodoxy as I understand them are rarely to do with doctrinal issues - rather they are usually are about jurisidiction, finances, liturgical innovation and approach to ecumenism. You would be hard pushed to find Orthodox priests squaring off on the nature of hell, or the the possibility of God not knowing the future. There is a much greater doctrinal conformity within it than within Evangelicalism, precisely because it is so conservative.

I’m not as confident as you as to the ‘organic ecclesiology’ of Evangelicalism. I wish it were so, but I fear otherwise. I see a movement broader, less cohesive, and more permeable than you do. Which I suspect is due to our differing contexts - vis - the US and UK. John Stott is not the only annihilationist of stature in the UK, there’s also John Wenham, Stephen Travis, Howard Marshall. The most widely known evangelical in the country is Steve Chalke who recently challenged the evangelical consensus on Penal Substitution calling it ‘cosmic child abuse’, and he was supported by faculty from the London School of Theology - the largest Evangelical college in the country, which caused something of a crisis within the UK’s Evangelical Alliance.

It no longer holds for us simply to say on the essentials unity, non-essentials diversity, all things charity. Critics of us want to know why, if we tolerate a diversity of opinions within our ranks on infant baptism, annihilationism, re-marriage after divorce, the nature of the atonement, women in ordained ministry, the realtionship betweeen revelation and the scriptures, the eternal security of the believer etc, etc, we draw the line at homosexual marriage as a ‘bridge too far’ - and some evangelicals are now ‘softening’ on this issue. Why are baptism and the atonement relegated to second order issues and homosexual marriage elevated to a first order issue? - our critics are genuinely perplexed. As one who is frequently challenged as to the cohesion and theological depth of Evangelicalism by non-evangelicals I find it increasingly hard to defend with conviction.

Thus, for evangelicals, the doctrine itself is True in an absolute sense but not true because it was articulated by the Church in council, but rather because it correctly articulates the infallible fullness of the biblical revelation above.

I think this is exactly the position that Mozley argues.

From another nineteenth century Anglo-Catholic:

“Scripture ought to be of itself sufficient for the overthrow of all errors against faith; but since men are liable to be misled, by the evil interpretations of others, to misunderstand the divine meaning of Scripture, the doctrine or tradition of Christians in all ages, i.e. of the catholic Church, is presented to us as a confirmation of the true meaning of Scripture.  It is not meant that this tradition conveys to use the exact interpretation of all the particular texts of the Bible.  Its utility is of a simpler and more general character; it relates to the interpretation of Scripture as a whole, to the doctrine deduced from it in general.  That doctrine which claims to be deduced from Scripture, and which all Christians believed from the beginning, must be truly scriptural.  That doctrine which claims to be deduced from Scripture, and which all the Church from the beginning reprobated and abhorred, must be founded on a perversion and misinterpretation of Scripture.
“The difference between the Anglo-catholic and the popular Romish doctrine of tradition is this: The former only admits tradition as confirmatory of the true meaning of Scripture, the latter asserts that it is also supplementary to Scripture, conveying doctrines which Scripture has omitted.”

W. Palmer, Treatise on the Church (1872), cited in Owen Chadwick, The Mind of the Oxford Movement 1960.

Matt—the silly d*mn smilies show up automatically with certain combinations of characters—in this case, apostrophe-close paren.

(or the ‘catholic’ ) — leaving a space between the ’ and the ) will defeat the substitution routine.  They will show up in Preview so you can annihilate them.  I personally regard them as minor demons to be exorcised, but apparently they have a wide following…

Matt, what’s this about RC Sproul and infant baptism?  Say it ain’t so, Matt!  (Yes, I see where you are going with regard to EO disputes. and thanks to Bill Witt for an excellent quote from W. Palmer.)

Matt,

Thank you for this article.  It’s very good.  I just had a couple of questions, though.  First, how are Evangelicals assured that the NT as canonized is the infallible word of God (since the actual books of the NT were selected in the 300s - - well after the original apostles had passed away)  - - i.e. if the later bishops who selected the books of the NT (and later oversaw translations, etc) were not covered by the promise of John?  And second, how are Evangelicals assured that the OT is infallible?

Thanks for your help, as always.

Dutch Girl,

The books that originated with with the apostles or through apostolic authorship or approval were well known long before 300. The Muratorian fragment (dated 170AD) lists almost all of the NT books as apostolic with the exception of 2nd Peter and I believe Eusebius tells us of Papias, bishop of Heiropolis, described as a companion of Polycarp who, himself, was a disciple of John.  Papias, at the beginning of the second century, recorded the process of the authorship of the 4 gospels which were even this early recognized as apostolic. In short, because the disciples and apostles were real people and because the Church was careful to keep their writings as sacred, there was never really much doubt about which books possessed apostolic authority and which did not. The Da Vince Codish assertions to the contrary are mythical.

As for your second question, since the canon was essentially established and recognized long before Nicea, there was no need for an “infallible” selection process. It was simply a matter of recieving officially what had always been the case unofficially.

Tom H. asks:

“How is it then, that St. Paul’s “post-Ascension divine revelation” is accorded canonical status by both Evangelical and Catholics when he wasn’t one of those in the room when Jesus gave the apostles their divine authority, which expired with their death?  Why is St. Paul’s seemingly “private” revelation considered to be part of the deposit of faith when other revelations are not?”

It is not just those in the room with Jesus to whom the promise applies but also those whose ministry and work they approved in their lifetime as well. Paul was called by Christ to be an apostle, but Peter affirmed this call, approved of Paul’s ministry, considered him an apostle, and acknowledged his work as “scripture”. So while Christ called Paul and set him apart, this calling was also recognized and affirmed by those in the room when Christ made the promise.

In this regard, 2nd Peter 3:15-16 is very important:

“15Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. 16He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do <b>the other scriptures</b>, to their own destruction.”

Peter considered Paul’s letters “scripture.”

Matt, you wrote:

RC Sproul (Calvinist no infant baptism)

Do you have a citation from RC handy?  I find this shocking, and from what I know of his views on strict subscription to the Westminster Standards, very odd.

LKW+,

When I read your first response this morning, I started looking, but was interupted. I actually heard it on one of his online lectures. He was speaking about things that we can differ over and have serious engagement on but that we do not have to divide over and in that context he was speaking about “those who believe in infant baptism” and he said something like: they may be wrong, but “we” need to know what “they” believe in order to engage them properly.

It suprised me at the time as well.

But now I am thinking that perhaps I misheard him or misunderstood the context of his remarks. I believe I have the lecture on my ipod. I am going to re-listen to it and I’ll come back.

Thanks, Matt.  That’s very helpful.

RC Sproul (Calvinist no infant baptism)

RC Sproul is for infant baptism. There was a tape form Ligonier of a friendly debate between RC & John MacArthur (no sign of it on either website now but then was available nearly ten years ago) RC pro-infant & John pro-believers.

Hosea 6:6,

yes, I listened to the lecture again and he was speaking hypothetically to those who disagreed wiht this position. You are correct and Fr. Lawrence will be relieved (as am I) to know that RC Sproul does hold to infant baptism

From my point of view, as an Anglo-Catholic, I sometimes think that the Roman and Eastern ORthodox Churches do have a point when they insist on BOTH/AND Scripture and Tradition. I look at the myriad of Protestant Churches, all claiming to be based on the same Holy Bible, and yet holding widely divergent views on many points of doctrine. So much so that they are separated into warring factions that will have absolutely nothing to do with one another. How many different kinds of Baptists are there? Then one can get into such groups as the Seventh Day Adventists who also claim to be based on the Bible and yet they are very different from other Christian groups.

Yes, both Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, have their problems, but doctrinally they seem far better able to contain themselves from splits. There may be canonical splits among the EO but they still profess the same doctrine. Perhaps there is something to say about 2,000 years of Spirit led tradition.

Thanks for checking.  I am indeed relieved, but happier to know that people are reading theologians like RC Sproul.

FrRick:  there is something to what you say about the unitive tendences of EO and the RCC, and disunitive tendencies of Protestantism.  But please don’t overplay your hand on this.
(1)  Some Protestant groups are more prone to splitting than others.
I could expound on this point, but you know what I mean.  (2)  EO unity, in my observation is almost a hoax.  I recall having lunch a few years back with an OCA pastor, who expressed much acrimony to the other two groups (Greek Orthodox and Antiochene Orthodox) present in the city.  He also shared his anathemas on a faction of his congregation which had pulled out over some local spat to form a Romanian Orthodox parish.  When he launched into a harangue on Orthodox unity, I summoned the waitress and asked for my chit.  This EO scene was worse than the notoriously divided CC.
(3) the RC’s are bound through a common allegiance to the See of Rome, but they have their own ways of being sectarian: ethnic parishes, religious orders (Dominicans vs Jesuits vs Franciscans), pastor vs congregation wars.  “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.”  There ain’t no perfect church this side of heaven.

Sodbuster said:

Tradition is a sea-anchor, not the sole inerrant interpreter, and the Bible is God’s book, not the Church’s book.

Here is one of those moments where I do wonder if there is an unbridgeable chasm between Catholic and Evangelical positions. As someone who is firmly in the Catholic side of the camp, I literally cannot comprehend the above distinction between “God’s book” and “the Church’s book” as contraditory views. Instead, my ecclesiology and my experience of Scripture both tell me that God’s book is the Church’s book. If the Church is the body of Christ, then its sacraments, its deposit of sacred revelation, and its rule of faith are all God’s. Full stop. No qualification necessary.

More to my training in the history of the Church and the interpretation of Scripture, I think it safe to assume that a) Israel existed long before the Old Testament did, and even if one accepts the problematic claim that Moses wrote the Torah, he did not do it until AFTER Israel was God’s covenant people; b) the Church existed before a single word of the New Testament was written. Put another way: because the texts of Scripture were composed over time by various authors, there needs to be a faith community that could (and in fact did) determine which texts available fit the faith as it had been received by the community.

Both the Old and the New Testaments attest to available documents that are quoted in Scripture but are not included in Scripture (The Annals of the Kings of Israel and Judah, the book of Enoch, non-extant letters of Paul, etc.). Some of these were lost, true, but others were rejected by either Israel or the Church as outside the received faith. To me, this means the faith community—i.e., Israel and the Church—must precede the Bible (both chronologically and logically, not to mention faithfully). The community needed a faith tradition first in order to determine what texts constituted the rule and measure of faith.

True, the Bible in turn becomes the discipline and measure of the community, but the community also must preserve a faith that makes sense of Scripture. As one sees in modern secular biblical studies, the text of Scripture alone is insufficient: there must be a life of faith that guides the reader into how to hear Scripture and to be open to the movement of the Holy Spirit in reading. I truly do not believe in a vast secularist conspiracy to undermine the authority of Scripture; many of the people I have met in the field of academic biblical studies are authentically inquiring people who do not have a community of faith that is able (or willing) to guide and correct their reading of Scripture. (There, by the way, is a deep indictment of the teaching of many of the bishops in the Episcopal Church over the last thirty years or more.) In fact, I would be willing to propose that the incoherence of much modern biblical scholarship is direct witness to the reality that Scripture read apart from a faith tradition leads most people into radical confusion.

I don’t think I am saying something unique to the Catholic perspective here (at least I hope not!), but I am saying something that I believe the Catholic side of the spectrum keeps well in mind: we need the community of faith to read Scripture rightly, and we needED the community of faith first to tell us what Scripture is.

Matt,
Thank you for your insightful, reasoned, response.  I do appreciate it.

LKW
Regarding unitive/disunitive tendencies.  In his autobiography of faith, “Nearer My God”, William F. Buckley Jr. quotes Fr. Andrew Greeley on the validity of disengaging from Catholic Christian heritage due to the failures of Christians and the failures of Christian leadership.

Search for the perfect church if you will; when you find it, join it, and realize that on that day it becomes something less than perfect.

On the authority of Scripture, I will have to take my stand with the Anglican evangelical views being expressed here.  My own view of Tradition (capital “T”) is that it represents the mind and life of the Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, in rightly interpreting the meaning of Holy Scripture, usually in response to heretical challenges as to that meaning, but I do not think it can be viewed as a separate source, or a separate “stream” flowing from one source, alongside Scripture.  At least, not so much so that it discloses to us doctrines of the faith which have no warrant in Scripture whatsoever. 

It is quite true that the canon of the New Testament is not self-authenticating (in the sense that it could be established through the efforts of human research alone—which books belong, which don’t) and that it was finally fixed by the decision of a Church council.  However, I believe that that council was simply expressing its awareness of the “mind of the Church” in determining the canon, and could do so faithfully based on the apostolic sanction already bestowed upon the scriptures, and preserved in the Church’s continuous life and mission, guided by the Holy Spirit.  To borrow a turn of phrase from Father Kennedy, the New Testament canon was not authentic because it was recognized by a Church council, it was recognized by a Church council because it was authentic, and this could be and was recognized by the Church.

Anglo-Catholics do not accept the doctrine of the “infallibility” of the Church (although some might), but they do believe in its indefectibility.  This interpretation of Our Lord’s words that “the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it” means that, while heresies and schisms will come and go, the Church as a whole will never perish from the face of the earth, nor will it ever completely fall into heresy and abandonment of faith.  The emphasis here really is on “the Church as a whole,” including the Roman Church, the Churches of Eastern Orthodoxy, and the Anglican Communion, since Christ’s Holy Catholic Church subsists in all three branches.  Errors may occur in any one branch, or in all, but not to such an extent that the Christian faith is in danger of being lost altogether.

What is true of the Church’s recognition of the canon of Holy Scripture is also true of the dogmatic pronouncements of Ecumenical Councils.  I am fortunate enough to possess a copy of the 1914 edition of + F. W. Puller’s “The Primitive Saints and the See of Rome.”  Father Puller was a member of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, and this work is a real Anglo-Catholic gem.  He not only ably defends the Anglican position vis-a-vis the arguments of the Roman Church as to the papacy’s claims of authority in the early undivided Church, he also explains the sense in which Anglicans can understand the “development of doctrine,” in contrast to Newman’s post-conversion theory:

“In passing the great synodical acts, by which the heresies of Arius, Nestorious, and Eutyches were condemned, and certain new formulas were established in opposition to those heresies, as obligatory tests of orthodoxy, the Church had no idea of making any substantial development in her doctrine.  Her view was that she was resisting an innovating development, and was carefully re-stating in precise terminology the doctrine which she had held and taught from the first.”

Now, Anglicans must recognize that the authority of Ecumenical Councils has been lost as a result of divisions in the Church.  (The Lambeth Councils certainly can’t qualify as a substitute!)  But I find this no more troubling than the very lamentable divisions themselves, and I am persuaded that the dogmatic definitions of the early Church Councils that we can all agree about do quite enough to preserve us from any major lapses into heresy, and the abandonment of the Christian faith.  This does not mean that we cannot fall into heresy, only that we need not do so if our reliance remains upon the doctrines of Holy Scripture and the teachings of Tradition that we already have at our disposal.

So what does an Anglo-Catholic make of the theological developments of the sixteenth century, most notably the ideas of Luther and Calvin?  While I continue to hold to a Catholic doctrine of justification by faith, I have not been convinced that the views of Luther and Calvin can properly be called heretical (although some who claim to be proponents of those views very well may be).  I see in their theology no fundamental denial of any Catholic doctrine which must be regarded as “de fide.”  What I do in fact see, more and more, is simply different ways to describe and evaluate realities fundamental to all Christians, that we are “justified by faith” and “saved by grace.”  I am simply not that troubled by it.  If evangelical Anglicans are prepared to live with me, then I am prepared to live with them.

Episcopalienated, thanks for a most insightful reply. You have brought up an issue that needs clarification for me. Specifically,

To borrow a turn of phrase from Father Kennedy, the New Testament canon was not authentic because it was recognized by a Church council, it was recognized by a Church council because it was authentic, and this could be and was recognized by the Church.

This view doesn’t really answer the question of which comes first, however; it indeed appears to beg the question from my perspective, or at most moves it back a step. How did the Church recognize the individual books of the Bible as authentic unless it first had an understanding of the faith tradition?

Thus, even if one says the Church recognized them because they are authentic, you still need to explain how such authenticity came to be known by the Church, and in all honesty, apostolic sanction is not sufficient: as we know, there arose books claiming authorship by apostles, yet the Church was aware they are not canonical. Furthermore, this does not explain the situation with either the book of Hebrews or Revelation, both of which were hotly contested by various parts of the early Church precisely because their apostolic sanction was unclear.

Sodbuster, thanks too for your response. I see, though, a related problem in your response. I was specifically noting that even if one does allow that Moses composed the Torah, you still have only the Torah. The last books of the Protestant Old Testament still would have been written after the return from the Exile, which is more than one thousand years later. If one includes the materials of the Septuagint (as did the early Church), then you face a period pushing close to 1300 years for the entire time to compose the texts of the Old Testament (and by the way, create a much larger problem for the Bible authenticating itself: the Septuagint was normative for the early Church, yet it is not for most of Protestantism today, and much of this distinction rests solely on Jerome and his decision to separate books by extant language groups of the documents of his time).

All of this means that the community of Israel needed to be able to recognize when Scripture changed because the canon did change (as did the fullness of revelation) each time a new book was added to the Old Testament. A similar issue arises in the Church: the Church never claimed that the documents were written in the Vatican (I truly hope you would admit that your characterization above is both unfair and a rather poor attempt at humor given that we are trying to work on an ecumenical dialogue here). In direct contrast to your implied portrayal of its view, the Roman Catholic perspective instead acknowledges the Scripturally-attested truth that not all the books of the New Testament were written at the same time, so one needs a faith tradition in order to know what books to include as they come into being. Obviously, the Church did not stop with Paul’s letters because the Gospels and the other apostles’ letters are also included (even though, as Matt Kennedy noted above concerning 2 Peter, for a time only Paul’s letters were considered New Testament Scripture).

Also, I would hope you would be willing to take a more generous perspective on the historical-critical method, which often runs quite opposite to the Bultmannian demythologizing mode. As I noted, the Roman Catholic Church believes (as do I) that the historical-critical method enlivens a close, careful, and Spirit-guided reading of Scripture because it reminds us that we must place revelation in an historical context if we wish to discover how it speaks fully to us in these latter days. If such a view is non-negotiable for an Evangelical position, then as I feared, there may be an unbridgeable chasm between (Roman) Catholic and Evangelical approaches to Scripture.

Leaving that aside, however, you are missing a much larger point for me (and, if I am correct, for the Roman Catholic Church as well): you said, Sodbuster, that “[o]ne cannot say that the Church as an institutional, united, universal structure existed before the New Testament scriptures, and then sat down and decided to what accept and what not to accept.”

Actually, one can say that, and I do say that: I say, with Scripture, that the Church comes into being at Pentecost. There is no New Testament at the Pentecost experience. The Church appears when the Holy Spirit descends, and that Holy Spirit-inspired Church does come to recognize Scripture through its experience of it (often as read and prayed in a liturgical setting, not in a committee or office meeting). Similarly, Israel as the covenant community exists before Moses: Moses is called to bring the chosen children of Abraham into covenant at Sinai, true, but they are brought forth from Egypt precisely because they are God’s Chosen People. Thus again, Scripture itself attests to the fact that the faith communities existed before the Scriptures were written down.

No Sodbuster, not off topic at all. This has been a great discussion.

TomW,

Let me give you a hypothetical.

Let’s say that before a man dies he places a large sum of money in a bond or some other form of investment that will not mature for 400 years (just go with me here). Then he makes out a will giving the bond into the care of his direct male descendants until maturity. He gives a copy of the will to his sons who, in turn, each make copies for their own offspring. From generation to generation the will is treasured and passed on from father to son.

But there is a problem. The ex-wife of one of the second generation male descendants, after a bitter divorce, forges a will that bears the family name but that gives care of the bond into the hands of others. As the generations pass and there are more family disputes and divorces more counterfeits are forged.

But the true heirs know that this is going on and are careful to guard and keep the original will.

400 years after the first man’s death the direct male descendants along with the false claimants come together before a judge to determine which documents are authentic.

The judge consults experts on 21st century documents who test all of the documents using well established criteria. The counterfeits are well known and easily recognized and the claimants dismissed. The original will, kept by the male descendants from father to son, is received by the court and the male descendants of the original man recognized as the original heirs.

Question: IS the original will the true and authoritative will because the judge recognized it as such or would it have been the true and original will even if the judge had erred in his judgement? Does the judge make the original will the true will or does he simply recognise what has been true all along?

One commonly neglected contrast between Scripture and tradition is that whereas there is a definitive “canon” of Scripture, the tradition itself is a fairly amorphous body of doctrine, spirituality and worship.  Granted, there are two canons for the OT, and even more variations when we look at EO and the Oriental Churches.  But the imprecision of “tradition,” when we look at the numerous differences of EO and RC belief, make the whole idea very slippery.  Even within Western theology, one ask which is truly traditional, Augustinian or semi-Pelagian views of original sin and predestination?  In a good recent conversation with an ECUSA priest he remarked that when someone tells you his theology is “patristic,” he might just mean a high-church version of New Age.

“even if one accepts the problematic claim that Moses wrote the Torah,”

But Church tradition says he did!  Is tradition something we accept only when higher criticism gives us the green light?  This is what I meant about the slipperiness of tradition.

I aso thank you Matt.  I did find this helpful.  But, as one person suggests, maybe my “orthodoxy” is one of heart not head.  Because my paradigm of the moment may be that, I am wondering could you address some of the great “feelers” of the Church ..Teresa of Avila, the author of the Cloud of Unknowing, Julian of Norwich and where they mystic tradition fits in?  On a lighter note, I have recently completed Churchill’s six volumes on WW2 and was often baffled by English English.  Such statements as “I can not be unsympathetic…” etc.  What do they really mean?  My husband is now emersed in Hooker’s Ecclesiatical Polity.  viz: “John Calvin was one of the finest minds the French ever produced.”

EmilyH,

Mysticism must be tethered to right doctrine. Otherwise it can slide into idolatry. God’s self-revelation in the Scriptures forms the boundary and the border within which the mystic dreams and hears and sees. Beyond those wide and broad boundaries, the god the mystic sees is many times a false one.

If one is interested in reading a Catholic presentation of Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition, I commend to you two books by Yves Congar:

(1) Tradition and Traditions  (unfortunately out of print)

(2) The Meaning of Tradition (Ignatius)

Last year Pope Benedict offered a series of catechetical reflections on the Church.  In his April 26th audience he said:

“This permanent actualization of the active presence of the Lord Jesus in his People, brought about by the Holy Spirit and expressed in the Church through the apostolic ministry and fraternal communion is what, in a theological sense, is meant by the term “Tradition”: it is not merely the material transmission of what was given at the beginning to the Apostles, but the effective presence of the Crucified and Risen Lord Jesus who accompanies and guides in the Spirit the community he has gathered together.

“Tradition is the communion of the faithful around their legitimate Pastors down through history, a communion that the Holy Spirit nurtures, assuring the connection between the experience of the apostolic faith, lived in the original community of the disciples, and the actual experience of Christ in his Church.

“In other words, Tradition is the practical continuity of the Church, the holy Temple of God the Father, built on the foundation of the Apostles and held together by the cornerstone, Christ, through the life-giving action of the Spirit: “So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built into it for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit” (Eph 2: 19-22).

“Thanks to Tradition, guaranteed by the ministry of the Apostles and by their successors, the water of life that flowed from Christ’s side and his saving blood reach the women and men of all times. Thus, Tradition is the permanent presence of the Saviour who comes to meet us, to redeem us and to sanctify us in the Spirit, through the ministry of his Church, to the glory of the Father.

“Concluding and summing up, we can therefore say that Tradition is not the transmission of things or words, a collection of dead things. Tradition is the living river that links us to the origins, the living river in which the origins are ever present, the great river that leads us to the gates of eternity. And since this is so, in this living river the words of the Lord that we heard on the reader’s lips to start with are ceaselessly brought about: “I am with you always, to the close of the age” (Mt 28: 20).”

Matt, I have a feeling that I should not have ventured into this thread. In retrospect, I should never have made my original comment about Moses and the Torah and I do apologize to all who misunderstood. With that comment, I simply meant to acknowledge that some people, who are very good and faithful Christians, do not hold to the traditional claim that Moses wrote every word of the first five books of the Bible. All I was trying to do was to allow our discussion to be open to people who shared a different set of assumptions. I also was trying to point out (which I thought was the point of this thread) a difference between the (Roman) Catholic and the Evangelical positions: that at least for those in the Roman camp, one is not required to accept the tradition of Mosaic authorship.

This, of course, brings up the issue of what Tradition actually is, in Roman thought. The Tradition is NOT “all that is traditionally believed.” For instance, fasting on Fridays was traditionally a discipline of the Church; it no longer is. The once-common belief that the Bible supports slavery was a traditionally-held belief that is no longer common. These are the lower-case-t traditions, among which is now included the Mosaic authorship of every word of the Torah. I am far out of my range of expertise in explaining this, but I do think Protestants (and Roman Catholics themselves) often confuse capital-T Tradition and lower-case-t tradition, and when we are talking about revelation, we are firmly in the camp of capital-T Tradition.

I do feel we are increasingly talking past each other. Sodbuster notes that we have evidence of the Gospel of Mark existing 12-17 years after the Passion, and I am simply saying that the Church existed at Pentecost; thus, there still is a time gap there in which some sort of normative Tradition of understanding the faith needed to be preserved before texts began to appear. As for his comment about the Mosaic covenant vs. the Abrahamic covenant, again, I am simply citing Scripture: God says to Pharaoh, “Let my people go.” He does not say, “Let the future people of my covenant go.” Israel exists as the Chosen People before the Mosaic covenant, which means the community of faith exists before a word is written down.

I frankly don’t even understand what it means to be labeled “mythological” in this particular context. I certainly have said nothing that denies the divine inspiration of the texts, the content of these texts, or the divine inspiration of the Church in receiving the texts (indeed, I am strenuously trying to argue the opposite: that the Holy Spirit guided the choosing of the biblical texts!). I understand fully that these texts were preserved on separate scrolls and not as one big book. This again is precisely my point. However the Church (and Israel) came to receive these Scrolls, they did not arrive at once. For Israel, they appeared over hundreds of years and indeed were consciously gathered: first the Torah; then the Torah and Prophets; then the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings. There were debates about whether texts should be included: Song of Songs was debated at times for its content, Esther was debated for its lack of direct reference to God.

We see this again in the New Testament: we have lists from the Church fathers revealing varying acceptance of books such as Hebrews and Revelation (which was not accepted by parts of the Church in the Eastern Empire for a long time, if I recall correctly). Does this change the fact that these texts are inspired? No. I am not saying that at all. I am simply saying that it is not at all clear that the entire Church recognized a text immediately as inspired. And that as texts arise over time, the content of revelation changes. We know this as Christians: for us, the fullness of meaning in the Old Testament is revealed when it is read in light of the New.

And I do know that the reality of the Septuagint is a rock upon which our ship of discussion runs aground. I am sure it will not help, but I mention anyway that Roman Catholic scholarship has made ample arguments about the use of the Septuagint (or LXX, as it is sometimes known) in the early Church. Indeed, the Gentiles would have needed a Greek Old Testament, and this is important because the LXX varies in even shared books: Esther looks very different in the LXX, and there are additions and subtractions of varying degree in almost every text of the Old Testament.

Were these simply “bad” translations? Well, that is hard to say if one accepts, as does Roman Catholic scholarship (including even the notes in the full version of the Jerusalem Bible), that these “bad” translations are the ones used by the New Testament writers. I understand Protestants do not accept this; I did not for a long time and now am persuaded by the RC arguments and wonder if this alone is enough to force me from the Episcopal Church. I don’t know.

And Matt, I guess it is either early in the morning or my brain is just too small, but I truly have no idea how your parable fits as a response to the Roman Catholic position.

Tomw,

Not at all sure why you regret coming to this conversation. I strongly disagree wiht you but I think your contributions have been valuable.

In any case my illustration was in answer to the question you asked:

“Thus, even if one says the Church recognized them because they are authentic, you still need to explain how such authenticity came to be known by the Church, and in all honesty, apostolic sanction is not sufficient: as we know, there arose books claiming authorship by apostles, yet the Church was aware they are not canonical.”

I was showing you how this could quite easily happen:
The “will” is the New Testament:
The “heir” is the Church
The counterfeit wills are the heretical gospels.

Tom W
you said:

“I am simply saying that it is not at all clear that the entire Church recognized a text immediately as inspired.”

I think you miss the point here. When the church did recieve books like Hebrews and 2nd Peter, she did not do so simply because she thought these books were good and orthodox, but because she believed them to have apostolic authorship. She did not simply declare them canonical because she liked the way that they sounded. She did so because she believed them to be apostolic and thus subject to the promises articulated above.

Matt, I guess I regret coming to the conversation because I am so unsuited to the task—and it has become a large task indeed.

I suppose at this point I need to agree to disagree because more and more, our discussion seems to hinge on different interpretations of Church history as much as it does on theologies of revelation or inspiration. For instance, what I have read indicates that yes, once the Church received disputed books, it did so on the basis of their apostolic connection. Not apostolic authorship, by the way: I don’t think the entire Church—dating back to the Church Fathers—has ever universally proclaimed that Paul wrote Hebrews. And as far as I know, the John who wrote Revelation has never been universally held to be an apostle. Of course, we know that Luke and Mark were not apostles either; rather, they were connected to apostles so we see the same issue of apostolic connection—rather than apostolic authorship—among the undisputed books of the NT.

But even with apostolic connection, however, one still needs some way to establish that this apostolic work was divinely inspired. To put this another way, we would not have preserved Peter’s laundry lists or Paul’s grocery lists. The Church (I thought) always understood that not all apostolic writings were divinely inspired. And in my reading, there were debates over what to include, and it was not easily settled by simple reference to an apostolic connection.

And for the RC position at least, one knew divinely-inspired apostolic writing on the basis of their preaching and teaching, which predates the writings of the texts. And this memory of the history of the apostles’ preaching and teaching is, for Roman Catholics, Tradition.

This is why your parable confuses me because (at least to me) it seems to keep assuming the New Testament is there, and debate about its canonical content came afterward. I am willing to be corrected and truly will do the necessary reading if anyone wishes to direct me, but the church history I have read suggests just the opposite: the Church appears first, texts are written, debate ensues (often vehemently so), and only then is the final canon established. From this perspective, there is no prior “will” for the “heirs” to dispute (unless one is referring to the Traditions of the Church, but then the parable proves the RC argument just as easily as yours).

Matt,
The problem with your parable is that “the man”, Jesus, didn’t leave a will.  The church, “the heirs”, wrote/delivered it with the help of the Holy Spirit.

Catechism of the Catholic Church, second edition
553
Jesus entrusted a specific authority to Peter: “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.“287 The “power of the keys” designates authority to govern the house of God, which is the Church. Jesus, the Good Shepherd, confirmed this mandate after his Resurrection: “Feed my sheep.“288 The power to “bind and loose” connotes the authority to absolve sins, to pronounce doctrinal judgments, and to make disciplinary decisions in the Church. Jesus entrusted this authority to the Church through the ministry of the apostles289 and in particular through the ministry of Peter, the only one to whom he specifically entrusted the keys of the kingdom.
The Canon of Scripture
120
It was by the apostolic Tradition that the Church discerned which writings are to be included in the list of the sacred books.90 This complete list is called the canon of Scripture. It includes 46 books for the Old Testament (45 if we count Jeremiah and Lamentations as one) and 27 for the New.91

The Holy Spirit is given “forever”, not just for the lifetime of the apostles and their chosen contemporaries.

John 14:15 - 16 (NRSVA) 15“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.  16And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.

The Holy Spirit will teach the fullness of things that Jesus did not reveal in addition to that which Jesus did say.

John 14:26 - 27 (NRSVA) 26But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.  27Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.

Either the RC is as it says it is and lays valid claims the power to bind and loose and the keys of kingdom or it is not.  The reformation stands to say that it is not.  The reformation posits that the church “lost its way” and needed to be re-formed with scripture providing the sole basis.  How is it possible that the infallible guidance of the Holy Spirit, given forever to teach everything, seems to vanish at a point uncertain, but after the deliverance of the inspired canon?  If this infallible guidance of the Spirit was upon the apostles and their chosen contemporaries in a fashion that left their writings canonical, why wasn’t this same guidance given to the methods and rules they developed to structure their church?  Remember, it is the church that Jesus left us, along with the Holy Spirit.

TomW,

I think you must have missed something in both the article and in the ensuing conversation. You said:

“For instance, what I have read indicates that yes, once the Church received disputed books, it did so on the basis of their apostolic connection. Not apostolic authorship, by the way: I don’t think the entire Church—dating back to the Church Fathers—has ever universally proclaimed that Paul wrote Hebrews. And as far as I know, the John who wrote Revelation has never been universally held to be an apostle. Of course, we know that Luke and Mark were not apostles either; rather, they were connected to apostles so we see the same issue of apostolic connection—rather than apostolic authorship—among the undisputed books of the NT.”

I do not think anyone would argue with this. In fact, I explicitly said in the article that those books considered subject to the promise were not just those written by the apostles themselves but also those approved by the apostles during their lifetimes. This is not in dispute.

Nor am I disputing that the apostles taught orally before their teachings were written. I am simply suggesting that the New Testament is the divinely inspired deposit of their teaching and it stands as such regardless of whether the church recognizes it to be so.

TomH,

You missed something in the illustration. The man was not intended to be Jesus but the apostles and those approved by them.

Moreover, you say:

“How is it possible that the infallible guidance of the Holy Spirit, given forever to teach everything, seems to vanish at a point uncertain, but after the deliverance of the inspired canon?”

Who said that the Holy Spirit vanished? To say that the promise of infallibility did not pass on to the next generation does not mean that the Holy Spirit vanishes. It is simply to recognise that the promises made in chapters 14-16 are primarily given to the apostles themselves. Jesus explicitly says as much in John 17 when he turns to address and pray for “those who will come after them”...ie the future church.

To Tom Wetzel: Not having access to your private email address, I will assure you here publicly that your contributions to this thread have been invaluable—and that you are not alone in your perspective. You articulate my own thoughts and convictions on the subject at hand, probably better than I could myself. Any account of scriptural authority that rests on apostolic authorship of all the NT documents (or Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, for that matter) is in grave jeopardy, and puts orthodox theology itself at risk. One thinks immediately of the recently departed Reginald Fuller as one who, as far as I can tell, was completely faithful to the teaching of the Church, but certainly did not shy away from the conclusions of biblical criticism. Ray Brown comes to mind as well. Even conservative free-church evangelical biblical scholars such as Robert Gundry are not averse to the categories and concepts of “higher criticism.” Interestingly, in my participation on the HoB/D listserv over the last four years, I’ve had several “conversations” with liberals of the Jesus Seminar sort, who, for example, will trust, say, Galatians or Romans because they are “undisputedly Pauline” while casting a more skeptical eye on Colossians or Ephesians because they may be pseudonymous. The same would apply to gospel passages that are deemed to be “authentic” sayings of Jesus versus those that are “constructed” by the evangelist. My response has always been, “I don’t, in the end, care who wrote what. Every word of the gospels is authoritative even if Jesus didn’t actually speak some of them. And all of the epistles are authoritative, even if Paul didn’t write all the ones that are attributed to him. They are authoritative because they are canonical scripture. It is the consensus fidelium, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, that gives them their binding authority.”

Matt,
You don’t consider “the apostles and those approved by them” to be the church?

Matt,

Yes, I do fear we are talking past each other at this point. I didn’t miss your point. You missed mine: I am saying that, as far as my understanding of Church history goes, I am not aware that either Hebrews or Revelation was “approved by the apostles during their lifetimes.” I would say that, at least according to a large branch of Roman Catholic and Protestant scholarship (that in my opinion is fully orthodox and faith-filled), these books are NOT understood to have been approved by the apostles themselves. John of Patmos’ direct connection to any apostle is not universally held (nor was it universally held so in the early Church), although he is connected broadly speaking to the apostolic Tradition.

And according to the history I have read, the ascription/connection of the book of Hebrews to Paul cannot be traced back any further than the second century church of Alexandria (long after Paul was dead), and it was not accepted as canonical in the Western Church until the end of the 4th century AD. This is a dual-prong point: 1) the Pauline apostolic connection emerges over time rather than is established; and 2) once the apostolic connection emerges, it remains debatable to the Church whether such a connection proves its canonicity.

So indeed, there IS dispute here about some of the historical points claimed above. That is why I said the discussion is increasingly revolving around church history, rather than theology of revelation.

TomW.

1. I do not at all assert Pauline authorship of Hebrews. If pressed I suppose I would come down with those who support Appollos as the author. But nevertheless the book was written during the lifetimes of the apostles and survived with apostolic warrant

2. Depending on whether the beast in question is Nero or a later caesar, Revelation was likely written during the lifetime of the apostles too and also recieved apostolic warrant.

Fr. Dan,

I am not sure where you get the idea that the Reformed position is contra-higher criticism. Certainly the hermeneutic of suspicio and the anti-supernaturalist presuppositions are antithetical to historical enquiry, as NT Wright himself pointed out in the first part of his book “The Resurrection of The Son of God” but with those two correctives higher criticism is a great help. Wright also as you may know holds to Pauline authorship of both colossians and ephesians as well as the pastorals.

The question of Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch illuminates for us the problem of Scripture and Tradition.  All Christians, I hope, affirm the dictum “God speaks, we respond,” but the problem is identifying that Word of God to which we may and must submit our minds and hearts.  The rise of critical scholarship and historical scholarship (with all of its many, many problems) simply does not allow us to retreat to a naive identification of Scripture with the unadulterated, inerrant Word of God.  I wish it were otherwise.  Our lives would be much easier, wouldn’t it? 

The Bible is a collection of texts that must be interpreted.  If we do not presuppose a community indwelt and formed by the risen Christ that can read these texts with the mind of Christ, there is simply no way to confidently identify the word of God within the words of Holy Scripture, nor is there any way to confidently negotiate between conflicting interpretations.  Chesterton’s comment about fundamentalism and the Church speak to the issue before us:

“[The Catholic Church] is impartial in a fight between the Fundamentalist and the theory of the Origin of Species, because it goes back to an origin before that Origin; because it is more fundamental than Fundamentalism. It knows where the Bible came from. It also knows where most of the theories of Evolution go to. It knows there were many other Gospels besides the Four Gospels, and that the others were only eliminated by the authority of the Catholic Church. It knows there are many other evolutionary theories besides the Darwinian theory; and that the latter is quite likely to be eliminated by later science. It does not, in the conventional phrase, accept the conclusions of science, for the simple reason that science has not concluded. To conclude is to shut up; and the man of science is not at all likely to shut up. It does not, in the conventional phrase, believe what the Bible says, for the simple reason that the Bible does not say anything. You cannot put a book in the witness-box and ask it what it really means. The Fundamentalist controversy itself destroys Fundamentalism. The Bible by itself cannot be a basis of agreement when it is a cause of disagreement; it cannot be the common ground of Christians when some take it allegorically and some literally. The Catholic refers it to something that can say something, to the living, consistent, and continuous mind of which I have spoken; the highest mind of man guided by God.”

Fr Kimel et al…it is not necessarily a fundementalist assertion that Moses authored the core of the penteteuch. JEDP has been seriously undermined by subsequent scholarship as it was based on an “evolution” of religion paradigm that is, fundementally antisupernaturalist. The very same criticisms men like NT Wright lodge against second questers and other enlightenment inspired higher critics can be lodged against proponents to JEDP. It is no longer a given that Mosaic scholarship must be dismissed.

I agree that the argument for infallibility does not hinge on mosaic authorship but I caution against an unqualified acceptance of the 19th-20th century “advances” in exegesis.

I also suggest (without assuming that you have not) that that my catholic friends read through the Chicago Statement on inerrancy before rejecting it.

http://www.reformed.org/documents/index.html?mainframe=http://www.reformed.org/documents/icbi.html

The Roman Catholic view *seems* to be: the bishops of the Church meet together, the Holy Spirit moves them, they collegially create compromise documents, which then is treated as authoritative. I am not saying that that is the actual teaching of the Magisterium, but that that is what Catholic lay apologists seem to be trying to communicate.

This is not an inaccurate statement of the Catholic understanding of the dogmatic authority of the Church.  When the Church is confronted by conflicting interpretations of Holy Scripture that undermine the mission of the Church, then the Church gathers in the persons of her divinely-ordained bishops to discern truth and error.  Historically, this has usually meant the adoption of “compromise” dogmatic formulations.  It is often easier to identify clear error than it is to decide to competing adequate and less than adequate expressions of doctrinal truth.  The Council of Chalcedon is the most famous example:  its confession of “one person in two natures” kept Antiochians, Westerners, and Alexandrians (at least many of them) together in one Church, despite differing interpretations of the formula. 

Dogma sets the boundaries and permits discussion and argument within those boundaries—provided that one can trust the boundaries as divinely mandated.  That is the point of the Catholic understanding of the infallibility of the Church.

To Sodbuster,
I have read your thoughts on this thread with great interest, but I would like a clarification if possible. ISTM that you are asserting that the Scriptures were somehow written before the faith community (either Israel in the case of the OT, or the Church in the case of the NT). Am I misunderstanding you here?

How would you (and Fr Matt, if he is reading) respond to paragraph 126 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

We can distinguish three stages in the formation of the Gospels:

1. The life and teaching of Jesus.  The Church holds firmly that the four Gospels, “whose historicity she unhesitatingly affirms, faithfully hands on what Jesus, the Son of God, while he lived among men, really did and taught for their eternal salvation, until the day when he was taken up.”[citing Dei Verbum, 19]

2. The oral tradition. “For, after the ascension of the Lord,  the apostles handed on to their hearers what he had said and done, but with that fuller understanding which they, instructed by the glorious events of Christ and enlightened by the Spirit of truth, now enjoyed.”[Dei Verbum, 19]

3. The written Gospels. “The sacred authors, in writing the four Gospels, selected certain of the many elements which had been handed on, either orally or already in written form; others they synthesized or explained with an eye to the situation of the churches, while sustaining the form of preaching but always in such a fashion that they have told us the honest truth about Jesus.”[Dei Verbum, 19]

It would appear that, within the order of the transmission of divine revelation, the actual teaching of Jesus occurred first, followed by a number of years of an oral tradition passed down by the apostles to the churches they established, culminating in the writing of those traditions in the Gospels (under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit).  Do you disagree with this sequence of events? If not, how can you maintain the priority (temporally speaking) of the written Word over the oral tradition?

With regard to the oral tradition, surely you do not deny that such existed when even the apostles themselves made mention of it? St Paul exhorts the Thessalonians to “stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught” whether by the written word or by oral statements (2 Thess 2:15). And St John in his Third Letter mentions that while there was much he wanted to write, but he preferred to converse face to face (3 John 14). Perhaps I am overstating your position?

In any event, Catholics do not understand the oral apostolic tradition as “gnostic teaching” that somehow contradicts the written Word. Rather, the Church believes that the Gospel was transmitted orally “by the apostles who handed on, by the spoken word of their preaching, by the example they gave, by the institutions they established, what they themselves had received - whether from the lips of Christ, from his way of life and his works, or whether they had learned it from the Holy Spirit” (Dei Verbum, 7).

I’ve always been amused at criticisms by noncatholics and others of the role of “tradition” in the Catholic Church,specifically church councils. It’s not like some bishops and priests get together and
come up with whatever happens to be on their minds at the time.
The Holy Spirit does speak to and lead Catholics, hard as that might be to believe.                                  Secco

Two and a half years ago I wrote a series of blog articles contrasting Anglican, Catholic, and Orthodox understandings of Holy Tradition.  Folks may find them of interest.

(I mistakenly posted this comment on the other thread.  My apologies.)

I second Matt’s recommendation of the Chicago Statement to any who have not read it or come to terms with it.  And I would also recommend, particularly to recent Tiber-swimmers, the various introductions in the separate volumes of The Navarre Bible, a project of Opus Dei (a RC organization).  Particularly the volume on Mark, which includes a splendid essay on the “General Introduction to the Bible.”  Its similarity to writings of BB Warfield on inspiration and authority of the Bible is amazing.  Concerning canonicity, we are told, “Given that the divine inspiration of the Bible is a supernatural grace, only God can reveal which books specifically are inspired by Him….The revealed fact of the biblical canon is to be found in the faith of the Church from her beginnings ....  The concept of canonicity presupposes that of inspiration: a book is canonical when, having been written under divine inspiration, it is recognized and proclaimed as such by the Church…”  I would like to quote further on   what orthodox RC’s believe about the “truthfulness and inerrancy” of the Bible, but I recall an internet debate some while back when a very liberal Anglo-Catholic (writing I’m sure with a straight face) solemnly told me that the 19th century Holy See was unduly influenced by the wicked Calvinist Francois Turretin who “invented” the doctrine of plenary verbal inspiration.  I would also bring to Fr Kimel’s attention the fact that the Mosaic authorship of the Penteteuch (although “authorship” is variously defined) still has authoritative status in RC Biblical studies.

Forgive me for scratching my head, but why are we suddenly being directed to discussions of inerrancy? I didn’t notice that any of the Catholics here (Roman or Anglo) have questioned the inerrancy of Scripture. I also ran a search of this page, and no Catholic brought up source criticism, the JEDP hypothesis, or advocated a Bultmannian approach to Scripture. Is there another conversation going on here that I am missing?

Lawrence, I think you missed the more crucial point in the quotation you offered. First off, I am not sure where this quote comes from, so I am unsure of its authority in terms of RC Church doctrine. But even in what you quoted, the crucial issue is not what you highlighted,  but it is the very next sentence instead: “The concept of canonicity presupposes that of inspiration: a book is canonical when, having been written under divine inspiration, it is recognized and proclaimed as such by the Church…” In other words, the Roman Catholic position presupposes its canon indeed is divinely inspired. No one in the Catholic part of this thread has denied this. Rather, the difference from Protestanism is this: the Church defines what is inspired; it is not a self-evident function of the texts themselves. Or to put it another way, you need the Church’s teaching in order to discover what is canonical.

Tom, I think the question of inerrancy has arisen in the thread at this point because at some point we want to know precisely what God has communicated to us in the apostolic revelation.  The rise of historical consciousness, with the critical method, has made it more difficult for us to specify the content of the apostolic revelation.  What is of God and what is historically conditioned? 

The inerrancy position, with its identification of God’s revealed Word with the inscriptuated Word, purports to offer us a way out of this problem:  what the Bible says, God says.  But the inerrancy position can only function as an effective form of authority if the plain meaning of Scripture is truly plain.  Yet we all know that even inerrantists disagree on any number of important, church-dividing issues.  And Scripture cannot tell us how to decide between conflicting interpretations.  As Chesterton notes, “You cannot put a book in the witness-box and ask it what it really means.”

Father Kennedy:

“Nor am I disputing that the apostles taught orally before their teachings were written. I am simply suggesting that the New Testament is the divinely inspired deposit of their teaching and it stands as such regardless of whether the church recognizes it to be so.”

This is not clear to me.  Are you suggesting that it might somehow have been possible for the Church to not recognize the New Testament as “the divinely inspired deposit” of apostolic teaching?  If she had failed to do so, or had been unable to do so, where would that leave the rest of us? 

It has already been pointed out throughout this discussion that the composition of the New Testament scriptures took place over time, and not every part of the Church had access to all of it at once.  Books which we now accept as canonical were initially disputed by some, and the Church recognized the need to combat the claims of false gnostic oral traditions and spurious apocryphal “gospels” and “epistles.”  But when she had the freedom to do so, the Church did act to establish and fix for all time a New Testament canon which has never been altered, and which has dismissed for all time any false claimants to the title of apostolic scripture.

I do not accept the Roman view of Tradition or the infallibility of the Church, and I agree that the Church does not stand over, or even apart from, the Bible.  The books of the New Testament are not inspired and authoritative because a Church council made them so, and the bishops of the Church, as successors of the apostles and guided by the Holy Spirit, were simply able to recognize them for what they already were.  But this act of recognition was not only desirable, it was also entirely necessary for the future life and work of the Church.

I do not think that the Bible can be made to “stand alone” apart from the Church either.  We cannot have one without the other, even if Holy Scripture takes precedence, since a Bible which the early Church failed to recognize and defend as such would presumably be lost to us today, or its contents would still be a matter of ongoing dispute.  Perhaps this is not what you meant to suggest, but if not, please clarify the “regardless of whether the church recognizes it to be so” part of your statement.

To (mostly) Tom Wetzel and Fr. Kimel:

Fr. Kimel, I have not finished reading the “Tradition” thread on your site, although I promise to do so.  You are partly to blame for this state of affairs, because after I read this much I could not stop laughing:

“I am reminded of the conversation between two Calvinists in the 17th century. The one gentleman asks the other, “Can you tell me what the Arminians hold?” to which the second replies, “I am sorry to say that they hold half the deaneries and bishoprics in England.”

That is the wittiest thing I have read in a while, and I suppose it underscores the messy dilemma we Anglicans face, at least as it appears to Roman Catholic participants in this debate.  This thread is being moderated by a Calvinist Episcopal priest (who has the authority to summon the Commenatrix if I go too far afield—think: “Grand Inquisitor”) with evangelical Anglicans and Anglo-Catholics participating, all of whom belong to the same Church!  Who wouldn’t be confused?  Just what do Anglicans believe after all?  An important part of it may be that, if we can live in charity with our neighbors of different theological traditions in other denominations, it ought to be at least somewhat possible to do so when those “neighbors” are in our own church.

We’ve hammered our way through the issues pertaining to the authority of Scripture and Tradition, so I won’t try to recap everything in one post, especially since no one appears to be changing sides anyway.  But what struck me most was the observation made earlier on about relying on Tradition as a separate source (or separate stream) of revealed truth, apart from the teachings of Scripture.  The Roman Church and the Eastern Orthodox Churches both make this claim, but cannot agree with each other as to what the content of this oral Tradition really is.  How is an outside observer supposed to sort that out for himself?  We can read the Church Fathers and pray for guidance, but eventually we are left to fall back on a very “Protestant” thing: private judgment.  Now, the judgment of some is certainly better than others, but it does remain individual judgment after all.  On the other hand, Holy Scripture provides us with a written text to work with, and we all believe that it is both divinely inspired and fully authoritative, even if we sometimes dispute its meaning.  We can still disagree about it, but it becomes harder to do so.

We might try to argue that since the authority of Ecumenical Councils is of great importance, and only the Roman Church claims to still be conducting any, that helps us to arrive at the conclusion that she must be correct.  But if we remember the Western Schism, with three rival popes at one time, and the efforts of the Council of Constance to straighten things out, we are back to “square one.”  (At least I am.)  This Council initially asserted the authority of general councils over the pope himself, while determining just who the rightful pope was.  It was only after that mess was resolved that the newly established pope then decided that the provisions of the Council pertaining to conciliar authority were retroactively null and void.  A neat trick, but not one to inspire confidence in Rome’s “stand alone” continuity with the early Church!

So what solution can an Anglican come up with?  Mine is to simply fall back on the faith of the early undivided Church, and affirm and hold those doctrinal definitions which were promulgated at a time when the Church was as close to unanimity of understanding as she has ever been.  I find that the best way to keep “private judgment” to a bare minimum where the Catholic faith is concerned is to adhere to the Vincentian Canon of “that which has been believed everywhere, always and by all.”  I don’t feel entirely safe or certain in going any further than that.  I am convinced that we all alike, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Anglican, find there all that we ultimately need to know for the salvation of our souls and an adequate defense of the Christian faith. 

I know what a “disaster area” TEC must look like these days to those of you of other faith communions.  It looks that way to us too, but faithful Anglicans (in the classical sense) are still on the scene, and we pray that in a renewed and restored Anglican Christianity you may continue to find us worthy partners in dialogue, as we do you.  God bless!

Of course, if a re-aligned Anglicanism finds half of its deaneries and bishoprics in Calvinist hands, there is always life in a monastery somewhere.

Episcopalienated, let me add to your confusion. I am an Episcopalian who was baptized and confirmed Roman Catholic.

I just rose to the task of defending the Faith+Tradition argument because I find the Roman Catholic perspective on revelation persuasive, so persuasive in fact that I wonder if I am able to stay in TEC where it seems we keep running into the crushing difficulty involved in negotiating the Reformed and the Catholic traditions.

(Do I get a prize for defending the position well enough that you mistook me for a non-Episcopalian?) 

Episcopalianated,

Do not fear banning by this Calvinist. These last two threads have been quite enlightening and helpful thanks to commenters like you, Tom (both H and W) Fr. Kimel, Sodbuster, et al. Good stuff from everyone. Thank you.

Tom, old son, you do get a prize!  And if Rome gets word of your zany antics, you might get one of those papal knighthoods.  I’ll be happy to send in a letter of recommendation.  Just don’t push your luck by going door to door as Benedict XVI at Halloween!

But while I’m handing out “crypto-Catholic” prizes, I have one to bestow on “Mad Dog” Kennedy too.  By all means, check out the Calvinist website he linked.  You’ll find there the Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed—even the Chalcedonian definition of the Hypostatic Union, and the anathemas of the Second Council of Constantinople, all posted without any critical commentary whatsoever!  Who knew?   

http://www.reformed.org/documents/index.html?mainframe=http://www.reformed.org/documents/icbi.html

NOW what am I supposed to think?  My head is swimming! 

I may need to lie down for a while.  You guys!

About those “crushing difficulties” involved in “negotiating the Reformed and the Catholic traditions.”  “Crush” is such a relative term.  It makes me think of those cigarettes that come in a crush proof box.  True enough, they’re not as easy to smash with your hand as a regular pack, but try dropping a bowling ball on them and see how “crush proof” they really are!

All Anglicans are feeling the “crush” right now.  (It’s what we do!)  But, in spite of the beating it’s taken, my “box” is still intact, and I don’t mind being roughed up a bit.  It helps to keep me on my toes.  However, if it feels like the bowling ball has dropped on yours (or it’s been thrown under a steamroller), I can see where it might be time to go.

You make a very able defense of Rome’s position, so much so that it leads me to believe it really is your own.  Follow your heart!  And here’s a little variation on Pascal’s wager for you: if Anglicans are right, you have nothing to worry about in joining the Roman Church, as long as you are truly following your conscience.  On the other hand, if Rome is right . . . the rest of us have some catching up to do.  If it’s time for you to do yours, by all means, go for it!  We’ll clean up our mess as best we can without you.

OK, who wants to fool me next?

Tom Wetzel wrote:

Is there another conversation going on here that I am missing?
Lawrence, I think you missed the more crucial point in the quotation you offered. First off, I am not sure where this quote comes from, so I am unsure of its authority in terms of RC Church doctrine. But even in what you quoted, the crucial issue is not what you highlighted, but it is the very next sentence instead: “The concept of canonicity presupposes that of inspiration: a book is canonical when, having been written under divine inspiration, it is recognized and proclaimed as such by the Church…” In other words, the Roman Catholic position presupposes its canon indeed is divinely inspired.

Tom, as threads get longer they become unwieldy, and perhaps it was not entirely clear what I was responding to or why.  So there may indeed be more than one conversation going on!  To clarify:  someone had written of Moses’ authorship of the Pentateuch as something in doubt; at this I pounced (having some concerns, unrelated to this thread, to matters of OT criticism), pointing out that there is a strong Catholic consensus on this matter. (If you doubt this, check “Pentateuch” in the Catholic Encyclopaedia.)  Some Catholic contributor started throwing out the word “fundamentalist,” which I tried to counter with a quote from an established Catholic source.  I am sorry you did not read my post more thoroughly, as I clearly stated that the Navarre Commentary is published by Opus Dei and holds both Nihil Obstat and Imprimi Potest.  I know of no Catholic blog which enjoys that status.

Let me unpack the reason why I quoted the sentences which I did, from the Navarre Commentary.  This serves to refute a common faulty assumption, that some early Christians, maybe even apostles, wrote some books which floated around as non-canonical writings for about 300 years or longer, and then, presto, The Church held a big meeting and conferred a brand new status on said writings, making them suddenly into Inspired Scriptures.  No, the writings which comprise the NT were inspired at the moment of writing and authoritative from the very beginning.  The Church’s role in the process of canonization was simply to recognize and declare what was already a fact.  That role, as far as I am concerned, is an inspired role; but inspiration of Scripture lies behind canonization of Scripture.  The point of my quote was to argue (perhaps far off-topic, and if so, forgive me, Matt) that the classical Protestant position on Biblical authority is actually supported by knowledgeable orthodox RC writers.  (Even liberal RC Biblical scholars have to show respect to the notions of inspiration and inerrancy.)

1. What warrant do the four canonical gospels give us for believing that Jesus intended to leave us with (a) a book, or (b) a tradition?

2. Driving through a very rural part of America some decades ago, I passed a small settlement on whose surrounding roads were signs alleging that the people in that area belonged to Jesus. The signs also bore an emblem. The emblem was I think (I could be wrong) intended to express something about Christianity. It was not a cross. It was an open book. Would Jesus have recognized this as a sign that expressed the purpose of his earthly life?

3. Jesus was literate. Why, if God had chosen a written document as the appropriate medium to promulgate the true faith, did Jesus not simply sit down and write it?

Lawrence,

My own apologies to you for being less than clear. First about the quote: I did see in your comments that it was from the Navarre series, but I actually was wondering who specifically wrote that volume of the series, and if he or she was quoting formal Roman Catholic teaching or making his or her own statement. The Nihil Obstat and Imprimi Potest are not guarantees that teaching within a text is sound; they tend to be given out rather freely at times and often reflect the views of a particular bishop. In any case, they are only guides (in my experience) that assure no egregious error is contained in the given book; they are not guarantors of authentic Roman Catholic doctrine in every statement made within a text. So I am still curious as to who is the writer of the quote, but please don’t feel the need to track it down. I can probably take a look myself at some point in the future. (In this regard, be careful NOT to draw too strong a conclusion from material in the Catholic Encyclopedia, at least from the online edition, which is dated 1917. It often is helpful, but formal RC teaching on the nature of Scripture and revelation became more open to modern critical studies with Dei Verbum in 1965, and so the biblical articles in the Encyclopedia all are quite out of date by formal RC standards at this point.)

And again, not that I want to beat a dead horse, but I do want to emphasize that the divine inspiration of the biblical books was never in question in the discussions above, at least to my knowledge. The question has been: how is divine inspiration recognized? I still am not quite clear on how the Reformed tradition recognizes this inspiration, but I do know that, as the quote you offered from the Navarre Commentary itself says, the RC position is that the Church recognizes inspiration. The biblical texts are inspired by God, but their inspiration is not self-evident to the reader, nor is it clearly defined by a direct assertion of apostolic connection.

The is possible because the RC position both allows and believes that several books of the Bible were not recognized as canonical by the Church for sometimes as long as 200-250 years after they were written. Here is quote from the Vatican-approved New American Bible, which is (in both its main text and its footnotes) the definitive text of Scripture for Roman Catholics in the United States:

the Letter to the Hebrews does not itself claim to be the work of Paul; [. . .] it was accepted into the canon after much discussion. [. . .] The genuine letters of Paul are earlier in date than any of our written gospels. The dates of the other New Testament letters are more difficult to determine, but for the most part they belong to the second and third Christian generations rather than to the first.

(Both of the block quotes, by the way, can be found in the New American Bible online at the official Vatican webstite, http://www.vatican.va )

As far as the Mosaic authorship issue, I do apologize again for bringing it up because I think it confused an issue upon which there is much agreement among all of us; I merely wanted to point out that the RC position does allow people to believe that Moses did not compose the entirety of the Pentatuech. Here again is a quote from the preface to the Pentateuch in the New American Bible (the parenthetical material is not my addition!! it is in the original notes—don’t kill the messenger here, please!!):

The grandeur of this historic sweep is the result of a careful and complex joining of several historic traditions, or sources. These are primarily four: the so-called Yahwist, Elohist, Priestly and Deuteronomic strands that run through the Pentateuch. (They are conveniently abbreviated as J, E, P and D.) [. . .] This is not to deny the role of Moses in the development of the Pentateuch. It is true we do not conceive of him as the author of the books in the modern sense. [. . .] Hence, the reader is not held to undeviating literalness in interpreting the words, “the LORD said to Moses.”

I do however plead innocent of the other charge: I did not refer to anyone as a fundamentalist. I reserve that term for certain characters in Flannery O’Connor novels, and it is not a pejorative in those cases.

3. Jesus was literate. Why, if God had chosen a written document as the appropriate medium to promulgate the true faith, did Jesus not simply sit down and write it?

Most likely because the vast majority of the people of that time, and for many centuries afterwards. were illiterate.

The “General Introduction to the Bible” in the Navarre Bible is unsigned, but the title page says simply “members of the Faculty of Theology of the University of Navarre.”  The exegesis in these commentaries is sometimes pretty thin but the introductions are splendid.  Since Mark is the shortest Gospel, that volume was used for a “General Introduction to the Bible,” with some fine discussion of Biblical authority.  When I discovered this a few years ago, I thought I might be reading something coming from WTS.

Your quote goes to show that the Graf-Welhausen ideas have made inroads into RC scholarship (just at the time in history when it is less and less credible elsewhere).  The quote is useful to my argument that whereas Scripture is fairly clear-cut, tradition is amorphous and slippery.  Tradition is exceedingly valuable when it is regulated and defined by Scripture, but becomes a nose of wax when the authority of Scripture is compromised through negative criticism.

Tom:

For me, this statement from Mr. Wells really nails it down:

“This serves to refute a common faulty assumption, that some early Christians, maybe even apostles, wrote some books which floated around as non-canonical writings for about 300 years or longer, and then, presto, The Church held a big meeting and conferred a brand new status on said writings, making them suddenly into Inspired Scriptures.  No, the writings which comprise the NT were inspired at the moment of writing and authoritative from the very beginning.  The Church’s role in the process of canonization was simply to recognize and declare what was already a fact.”

The process of preserving and disseminating the writings of the New Testament began as soon as they were written, and they were regarded as inspired and authoritative right away by those Christians who received them.  This effort was overseen by the apostles and their immediate successors, who did not have to wait for the decisions of the Councils of Hippo and Carthage to arrive at a proper conclusion as to whether or not the epistles and gospels qualified as sacred Scripture.

The disputed books were relatively few in number, but were always recognized as inspired by some parts of the Church or they would not have been put forth for consideration at all.  After the legalization of the Christian religion under Constantine, the Church had the freedom to address the issue of canonicity and bring the Church as a whole to a common position as to their status.  This was a relatively minor adjustment compared to formally establishing a canon of the New Testament which already was recognized by most Christians.

The Councils of Hippo and Carthage were not even ecumenical councils composed of all, or at least most, of the bishops of the Church.  How then did they have the authority to define the canon of the New Testament in such a way that their decisions nevertheless became authoritative and undisputed?  I submit that this was the case because the Church’s consensus as to what constituted the New Testament was already so great that the action of these councils was received by comment consent of the Church as a whole as a recognition of what the Church essentially already believed.  No further definition at a higher level was considered necessary.

Which brings me to this question.  Ecumenical Councils were convened to establish the Nicene Creed and to address all the major Christological controversies.  From a Roman Catholic point of view, if the process of canonization did involve anything more than “simply to recognize and declare what was already a fact,” why wouldn’t the decision of an Ecumenical Council, or an early exercise of “ex cathedra” teaching authority by the Bishop of Rome, have been necessary in order to bestow the status of infallibility on the Church’s position as to the New Testament canon?

samo416,

I’ve always considered myself an evangelical Anglo-Catholic charismatic.

That is EXACTLY how I answered my former TEC bishop’s question about how I saw myself as an Anglican during my initial postulancy interview almost four years ago.  He had nothing else to say; but let me read for Orders for almost three years before sending a message third-hand, two days prior to my ordination that he would not ordain me, since my application raised some ‘red flags’. 
Of course, the fact that I had been ordained in the Church of God, Cleveland, for 25 years might have had something to do with it, he just did not know how to take me.
But, that is in the past, and we go on in another Province, doing what Christ has called us to do.

Matt,

Thank you for episode two, this is great!

Peace, in His Name.
Chip, cj

Fr. Michael Pomazansky, in his Dogmatic Theology writes:
<blockquote> “The Apostolic Tradition which has been preserved and guarded by the Church, by the very fact that it has been kept by the Church, becomes the Tradition of the Church herself, it ‘belongs’ to her, it testifies to her; and , in parallel to Sacred Scripture it is called by her, “Sacred Tradition.’
    The witness of Sacred Tradition is indispensable for our certainty that all the books of Sacred Scripture have been handed down to us from Apostolic times and are of Apostolic origin.
    Sacred Tradition is necessary for the correct understanding of separate passages of Sacred Scripture, and for refuting heretical interpretations of it, and, in general so as to avoid superficial, one-sided, and sometimes even prejudiced and false interpretations of it.
    Finally Sacred Tradition is also necessary because some truths of the faith are expressed in a completely definite form in Scripture, while others are not entirely clear and precise and therefor demand confirmation by the Sacred Apostolic Tradition.
    The Apostle commands, ‘Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle (IIThes. 2:15).
    Besides all this, Sacred Scripture is valuable because from it we see how the whole order of Church organization, the canons, the Divine Services and rites are rooted in and founded upon the way of life of the ancient Church.  Thus the preservation of ‘Tradition expressed the succession of the very essence of the Church.” <blockquote>

Episcopalientated, as I noted above, the quote from the Navarre Bible commentary actually does NOT support a claim that the canon was handed down without question or debate within the early Church. Rather, as I noted, the crucial sentence in the cited passage is this: “a book is canonical when, having been written under divine inspiration, it is recognized and proclaimed as such by the Church….” Keep in mind that the quote is from an Opus Dei commentary series: Opus Dei is a highly traditionalist RC group that takes a very high and strong view of the power of the teaching magisterium of the RC Church. The quote clearly says that canon is a function of the Church, not of the Scriptures themselves.

Please keep in mind that divine inspiration and canonicity are two separate categories under discussion; they seem to be growing increasingly blurred in this discussion. Again, for the record, no one here has claimed that Scripture is not divinely inspired. This is not the heart of the debate over revelation: the debate is whether the Church clarified which books belonged in the Bible or whether such texts were self-evidently canonical.

And here is St. Augustine to throw everyone in a tizzy:

I would not believe in the Gospel, had not the authority of the Catholic Church already moved me.

That comment expresses the RC view so well that it is cited in the Catechism (para. 119)

Here is the crux of my question for the Reformed/Evangelical position: I honestly have never read that there is evidence (biblical or historical) of a direct, known history of apostolic control over the creation of ALL of the texts of the New Testament. How does one defend this claim without recourse to some form of Tradition preserved by the Church?

If anyone wishes to suggest texts I might read on this, I would be most interested because I have never encountered any version of the historical-textual argument required to get us back to the apostolic era. And what does one do with the fact that Origen, Eusebius, and the Muratorian fragment describe different canons and that St. Augustine is still fighting to include Hebrews in the canon in 393 AD? Origen includes EXTRA books in the NT canon. These are not lightweights of the Church we are discussing, and they show the pervasiveness of the debate over canonicity. What does the Reformed tradition do with these views?

Lastly Episcopalienated, Rome did declare a canon infallibly: at Trent in 1546 and in response to the Reformation. Why not sooner? I hate to say it here after all the pixels pushed about, but I don’t think canonicity was an issue in the Church universal until the Reformation made it one. We know for instance that ancient Judaism also was comfortable with varying canons (hence, the deuterocanonical books under debate earlier). And it appears to me that the Eastern and Western Churches were comfortable leaving canon decisions up to the local bishop. It seems to me that canon debates arise when Church authority is questioned, which again (historically speaking) is why I find it persuasive to see the Church defining canon, rather than the canon existing self-evidently to the early Church. Had it been self-evident, there would not have been so much early debate.

As I said, I am more than delighted to be directed at historical-textual research that clarifies the Reformed argument on these issues.

So I think it comes down to this: if Jesus had intended written scripture to constitute the fount of revelation, he would not have become incarnate in poor, illiterate Palestine. He would have delayed the kairos until at least the invention of the printing press, and preferably until the arrival of the web.

As it is, we don’t need particularly highly developed textual critical tools, but only a fairly standard human memory, to appreciate that nowhere in the whole of the NT is there a shred of evidence that Jesus ever betrayed the least interest in founding a canon of scripture. As we well know, whenever he referred to scripture, he was referring to what went before. Whenever he referred to what he wanted to found, he called it an ekklesia. Whenever he wanted to spread his message, he sent apostles.

Mohammed knew better. Joseph Smith knew better. What they wanted was a book! They wanted certainty! Entrust a message to tradition, and of course it would at once be corrupted into a thousand heresies.  But once you put it in writing, there’s no argument, no room for dissension.

Tom, I hope you find a church in which you can worship. I hope you stay in TEC. I found my validation over the weekend, having attended church in the Roman Catholic Parish of my late husband.  He had 6 siblings - all RC.  I was married to one of those.  I was raised RC, and have 17 years of Catholic education.  After my second child was born, we became Episcopalian.  Not my choice, one made because of my husband’s experiences in his church.  We raised three children in the Episcopal Church.  I was content in many ways.  Such as the way my husband was buried in the Episcopal church after he committed suiced, whereas my mother was not in the Roman Catholic Church 17 years earlier.  All water under the bridege, all scripture to srot out, etc.  All of his siblings remain RC.  My Father-in-Law turned 80 last week, mass, big to do, and one of my sister-in-laws asked why I did not come back to the RC church.  I have a son who took his father’s suicide and turned it into grace.  He is the youngest Episcopal siminarian in our state, he was President of the Interfaith Council at U of A for three years, President of the Srudent Forum Of Episopal Students for three years, the church mouse, an officer in his fraternity and the church mouse.  He graduated summa cum laude, and was elected into the first group of Capstone Creed Heroes. 

Needless to say, one of my sister-in-laws asked
me why I did not go back to the Catholic Church (She is a charismatic Catholic) and I said because I support my son.  She said - You cannot worship TWO MASTERS.  That is all it took and I am alienated from my home away fom home forever.  Two Masters?? Good grief.  He is my son, I am his only parent, she is his Aunt.  How far are we going to go to alienate one another form each other?

Tom W,

you said:

“As I said, I am more than delighted to be directed at historical-textual research that clarifies the Reformed argument on these issues.”

The classic text is by FF Bruce, “The Canon of Scripture”

CPKS:
Not only does your last post represent a departure from the teachings of Rome, Orthodoxy and Protestantism, but from the teachings of the Apostles themselves who clearly understood themselves to be writing “scripture”. See 2 Peter 3:15-16. If Peter is correct there then so is Paul here: 2 Timothy 3:14-16.

It is not so much that Rome, Constantinople, and Geneva “want a book” like Joseph Smith. Rather it seems that you presume to know more with regard to Jesus’ will and teachings than the men who knew him personally and recorded his teachings infallibly.

These threads are a real education.  Thanks so much.

Matt said, “The classic text is by FF Bruce, ‘The Canon of Scripture.’”

Thanks, Matt! I now know what the first book on my summer reading list is! And may I heartily add that these threads on Evangelical-Catholic perspectives have been great for me as well. I have much to ponder, and I look forward to more from everyone!

Heidi said, “Tom, I hope you find a church in which you can worship. I hope you stay in TEC.”

Thank you for your kind thoughts and invitation, Heidi. As I should have told Episcopalienated after his nice thoughts as well, you ain’t quite lost me yet! A move to Rome (especially a return trip, as it would be for me) is not an easy decision, especially since I already know many arguments against it. And I know all too well that one shouldn’t change churches just because a particular one is a mess now; messes have a nasty tendency of moving around. This all adds to why these threads have been so meaningful for me. For those of you so inclined, I ask your prayers as well.

And so far, these here Episcopalians have been doin’ a doggone good job of looking none too shabby!

Dear Tom

After moves to ordain women a few years ago when an number of vicars from the CofE crossed the Tigris (with their wives!) I mentioned the exodus to my cousin, an RC priest.  His to me surprising comment was that that was a debate that their church might itself have in the future.

Hope you find a home where you are comfortable to worship

God Bless

Tom:

You now qualify for another prize.  The answer to my last question that I was looking for was indeed: the Council of Trent.  You did not disappoint me.  Very good!

But I am not making as much of the quote from the Navarre Bible commentary as you seem to think, and I am trying to remain mindful of the fact that inspiration and canonicity “are two separate categories under discussion.”  They’re definitely not one and the same, and I still wouldn’t use the term “self evidently canonical” to describe the books of the New Testament themselves, outside of the context and setting in which the process of canonization actually took place.

No “tizzies” for me over the quote from Augustine.  I agree with it completely!  I didn’t become a Christian by sitting down one day and reading the Bible for myself.  The message of Christianity was proclaimed to me by “the Catholic Church” in the form of Christian believers who witnessed to me and proclaimed its truthfulness, and they were very much under its authority.  Of course, instruction in the Scriptures did become an important part of it, and here’s some of what Augustine had to say about that:

“Let them show their church if they can, not by the speeches and mumblings of the Africans, not by the councils of their bishops, not by the writings of any of their champions, not by fraudulent signs and wonders, because we have been prepared and made cautious also against these things by the Word of the Lord; but [let them show their church] by a command of the Law, by the predictions of the prophets, by songs from the Psalms, by the words of the Shepherd Himself, by the preaching and labors of the evangelists; that is, by all the canonical authorities of the sacred books.”

Equally “tizzy free,” I hope.

I’m glad that Father Kennedy was able to give you a reference for a Reformed source for historical textual research on these issues.  I’m afraid that I might not be of much assistance in that area, since it’s not primarily the Reformed position (in the sense in which the term “Reformed” is usually employed) that I’m defending here.  No, my concern on one hand is to defend against a “stand alone” approach to the Bible which would tend to separate it from the life of the Church as a whole, or divorce it from the teaching authority of the Church altogether; and on the other hand, to argue against its subordination to Church Tradition, or the downgrading of its status as the definitive source of divine revelation as it has been disclosed to, and preserved by and for, the Church.

To do that I have to rely on Catholic sources and, when time again permits, I’ll try to pick back up with some arguments as to why I don’t think the Church had to wait for fifteen centuries, and the provocations of Martin Luther, in order to really determine what its New Testament canon is.  More later!

Dear Matt,

I note that you accuse me of presumption. However, I am simply recording what is uncontestable, namely, that nowhere does Jesus give any indication that he intended writings to serve as the fount of divine revelation.

If you think that I am departing from orthodoxy, then you are reading more into what I wrote than I intended. Your two quotes miss the point. The first certainly attests to the existence of S. Paul’s letters (“writings” or “scriptures” - there wasn’t the distinction in Greek), but I fail to see how either of them advances the thesis that Jesus intended a canon of writings to serve as the fount of divine revelation.

Of course, the Holy Spirit did guide the early church (S. Paul included) to use the medium of the written word despite its tendency (witnessed in holy scripture, e.g. at 2 Peter 3:16) to sustain controversy. This same verse shows that in apostolic times it was necessary for the central teaching authority of the church to administer correctives to faulty interpretation; and of course this has continued ever since. (S. Peter’s admonitions would have been no less normative or inspired if they had not in fact been written down, but conveyed by means of an oral communication. But by divine providence, we have them attested in the canon of scripture.)

Finally, I have said (and nobody has contradicted me) that whereas Jesus is nowhere recorded as expressing the intent to bequeath a canon of scripture, he is many times recorded as expressing the intent that his saving message should be transmitted by living, breathing human beings. While I don’t see this fact as constituting any sort of difficulty for those who believe in a divinely inspired, infallible New Testament, it seems to represent a considerable difficulty for those who might wish either to deny the authority of the teaching church, or to regard its authority as somehow secondary to or dependent upon its written legacy.

having grown up in real Anglo-Catholicism (not just the ritualistic shell left in many places) I would agree with Fr. Dan martins view of the relationship between Scripture and The Church that he comments on towards the beginning of the comments.  The Hypostatic union of the Church and Scripture that he put forth was specifically taught to me at Nashotah House (about 2 years ago). 
As a young priest, I still think Vernon Staley’s book, which Martins quotes, is still the closest succinct work to explaining the Anglo-Catholic perspective…I refer to it often.

Tom, I hope you will not wait till summer to read F.F.Bruce on the Canon.  You will surely reconsider several of the statements you have made.  I would also recommend Bruce Metzger’s “The Canon of the New Testament” and Roger Beckwith’s “The OT Canon of the NT Church.”

Let me quote again, more extensively, and give my understanding of the quote from the “General Intro” of the Navarre Bible Commentary.  The very conservative Opus Dei theologians write:

“Given that divine inspiration of the Bible is a supernatural grace, only God can reveal which books specifically are inspired by Him.  The list of inspired books is called the Canon of the Bible.  The revealed fact of the biblical canon is to be found in the faith of the Church from her very beginnings.   The most important documentary evidence that we have of this faith are the decrees of the councils…. This truth of faith is solemnly defined by the Council of Trent…..”

When a council made a statement concerning the Canon, it was not proclaiming something new (like a new revelation in Salt Lake City).  It was merely declaring what had already been widely held “from the beginning,” that is, from the day Jesus walked into the Nazareth synagoue and began reading from Isaiah, and the day when Peter stood up and quoted the OT as authoritative Scripture.

Tom, you are making much over a few, very few, local disputes over Hebrews, Revelation, II Peter, II and III John, and ignoring the overwhelming unanimity over the Four Gospels, Acts and Corpus Paulinum.  It is absurd to say, as you do, that each local diocese had its own local canon; were that the case, the very term would become meaningless.

You are also confusing these peripheral debates in the early Church over the NT canon with Reformation period debates over the OT canon.  That’s apples and oranges.  Many people make the mistake of assuming that since about 13 books were under dispute then, the whole OT was up for grabs.  All sides agreed, then as now, on the canonicity of the 39 books of the Hebrew Canon. No problem there. And when Trent declared in favor of the so-called Apocrypha, it did so after much internal debate.  Modern RC scholars are at pains to describe the “apocryphal” books as “deutero-canonical,” that is, holding a secondary place.  So the OT canon debate, for my money, is pretty much a logomachy: some like “apocryphal” and some like “deuterocanonical.”

“Hypostatic union” is a felicitous analogy. I think it has some support from Dei Verbum 9 and 10 (I quote from the end of 10):

It is clear, therefore, that sacred tradition, Sacred scripture and the teaching authority of the Church, in accord with God’s most wise design, are so linked and joined together that one cannot stand without the others, and that all together and each in its own way under the action of the one Holy Spirit contribute effectively to the salvation of souls.

I am a bit surprised by some of the assertions on this thread, and the ways in which some of them have not been forwarded through—so much so that, although I have been perusing Stand Firm for some time, I finally went through the process of registering.

Obviously, one cannot comment on a whole thread.  But in the give-and-take around Tom Wetzel’s various postings and queries, it has been asserted that a series of “local councils” in both the Eastern and Western sections of the Church in the Roman Empire (between roughly 380 and 420) “rightly decreed” or “rightly recognized” the Canon of Scripture.

Is not something missing here?  Those very same councils did indeed deal with the Canon of Scripture, ensuring the acceptance of Hebrews in the West (where it had previously been doubted or rejected) and the Book of Revelation in the East (where it had been previously rejected for the most part) and, by passing over them in silence, ensured that books such as the Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians (which had been included in a number of Eastern codices previously) would be rejected.  But they also recognized the deuterocanonical Old Testament books as fully canonical as well.  This being the case, if you accept the conclusion of these councils as regard the NT, on what basis can they be rejected as regards the OT?

The “deuterocanonical books” are those books which are included in the Catholic OT Canon, but not in the Reformation Protestant Canon.  They were “dogmatized” for the Catholic Church by the decree “Cantate Domino” of the Council of Florence in 1441, and again by the Council of Trent in 1547, this latter case in response to the denials by the Reformers from Luther onwards of the canonical status of these books.  They are accepted as canonical by the Orthodox, too, on the basis of these same local councils—but for the Orthodox the OT Canon has never been sealed shut, which is why some Orthodox Churches include books like the Prayer of Manasseh, Pslam 151, 3 and 4 Maccabees and 3 and 4 Esdras in the OT (and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church includes many more, such as the Book of Enoch), and not all Orthodox Churches include the same books (but all include those included in the Catholic Canon).  “Apostolic authorship” clearly cannot be the criterion at work here, and “discernment” of the “spiritual value” of a book says more, it seems to me, about the discerner than about the book. 

It is true that St. Jerome (d. 420) rejected these deuterocanonical books, openly at first, and later on privately (as J. N. D. Kelly shows in his biography of Jerome) after he submitted to the judgment of various synods on the subject, but he did this for very precise reasons, that are now known to be untenable.  They were (1) that only those OT books written in Hebrew were inspired and (2) that none of the deuterocanonical books were written in Hebrew.  The first postulate is unprovable; the second is false, as most of these books can now be demonstrated to have been written in Hebrew—and, in any case, St. Jerome was alone in his opinion among the Fathers of the Church, unless one counts the obscure Constantinopolitan Arian named Aerius (ca. 360 AD) as a “Father” or unless one includes St. Athanasius, who vacillated on the issue, on Jerome’s side.

For those who wish to pursue the issue further, essential reading includes: Albert Sundberg, *The Old Testament of the Early Church* (1964) and Roger Beckwith’s *The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church* (1986).  Sundberg, a Methodist scholar, insisted that the Catholic/Orthodox OT Canon was the correct Christian Biblical Canon, and that the Hebrew Canon ought to have no authority for Christians; Beckwith, an Evangelical English Anglican, attempts to refute Sundberg (although, having just embarked on my third attempt to read Beckwith’s book, I am at a loss to understand whether he is arguing that the “Protestant OT Canon” was in fact the OT Canon of the Early Church, or that it ought to have been).  Sundberg’s argument is summarized very lucidly in two artlcles in *Catholic Biblical Quarterly* in 1966 and 1968, “The Protestant Old Testament Canon: Ought It To Be Revised” and “The Old Testament: a Christian Canon” which treat, respectively and historically, Protestant views of the OT Canon since the Reformation, and Catholic views of it before, at and after the Council of Trent.

Actually, and in disagreement with Fr. Wells, there is a difference in sense between “deuterocanonical” and “apocryphal” book: the former were those books from the much larger collection of apocryphal books which some Christian thinkers thought could or should be read in church (which is what “canonical” originally meant).  Sundberg’s writings that I have cited are extraordinarily useful, whether or not one agrees with their conclusions, in differentiating between “apocryphal” and “deuterocanonical” and between “canonical” and “inspired”—sets of terms in which, in the post-Reformation debates, both terms have been regarded as quasi-synonymous, but were quite distinct in sense earlier on.  He is also very useful in demonstrating historically how Christian ignorance of the fact that the Jewish OT Canon was not determined until the 80s or 90s AD, but rather was supposed to have been “closed” in the time of Ezra/Nehemiah ca. 450 BC, introduced a world of confusion into the attempts of some Church Fathers (e.g., St. Augustine) to explain how there could be one “smaller” OT Canon in Hebrew and another “larger” one in Greek, of which it was, in their view, the latter that was authoritative for Christians.  (Beckwith, btw, tries to rehabilitate an earlier date for the “closing of the Canon” as well.)

One might well ask, why the Council of Florence “dogmatized” the OT Canon in 1441.  There is no contemporary answer, but it may be because the 1441 degree was actually a decree of reunion, temprary as it proved, between the Catholic Church, on the one hand, and the Coptic and Ethiopian churches, on the other.  It may well be that some on the Catholic side were aware of the large number of additional books, beyond the deuterocanonical ones, that the Copts and especially the Ethiopians incluided in their OTs, and wanted in this somewhat tacit manner to exclude them.

Dr Tighe:  RC’s and Anglicans (along with Protestants) differ in the usage of the term “apocrypha.”  What you call apocryphal is what we call pseudepigrapha.  We restrict the term “apocrypha” to the deuterocanonical books set apart in the Authorized Version under that appellation.  As a matter of interest, the AV was never printed without the Aprocrypha until the early 19th century, when extreme Evangelicals demanded that they be removed.  The Presbyterian churches of my youth had large pulpit Bibles including the Apocrypha.

Thank you, Fr. Wells; I was unaware of that terminological distinction and was following Sundberg’s use.

Lawrence, I suppose we will have to agree to disagree on the Navarre Bible Commentary’s meaning. Given that it was written in a conservative RC commentary series, I am willing to bet the farm that in the citation, “[t]he revealed fact of the biblical canon is to be found in the faith of the Church from her very beginnings,” an RC writer means what I have been saying: the canon was revealed to the Church through its conciliar work. That is all I have been asserting in this part of the thread. This view is buttressed, again, by the very next sentence: “The most important documentary evidence that we have of this faith are the decrees of the councils.... This truth of faith is solemnly defined by the Council of Trent.” And in any case, a modern Bible commentary does not prove anything about how the canon came into existence, nor is it even authoritative Church teaching; it merely asserts already what the writer believes and hopes he or she has learned.

That’s all I can do as well. I entered this discussion simply to clarify what I saw as a misunderstanding of the RC position. I happen to think such a view on the history of canonicity is persuasive, and I hope such a view is welcome in the Catholic side of TEC (and it seems to be if Fr. Dan Martins and Episcopalienated are correct, although I like their modified version of it much the better!). I don’t accept this history just because it agrees with my desired position. I have read and re-read these views on the historic emergence of the canon as part of the last ten years of study.

Could I be wrong? If it comes down just to me, I am willing to guarantee it. But I’m not resting on my feeble faculties; I am resting (in part) on the work of people like Joseph Blenkinsopp, Raymond Brown, and Jon Levenson (a Jewish scholar not known for his flights of fancy but for his careful and intense passion for Scripture and its history). You may not like any of them. Fair enough. I know one of them personally and have read enough of the other two to know their hearts and minds are bent solely toward serving God in a fully orthodox, biblical, and traditional sense of that service. I understand that you disagree, Lawrence, but such positions on the development of Scripture are not absurd, just as I do not think your positions are absurd. They simply reflect a different reading of the history of the early Church and of Second Temple Judaism—not simply my reading, but the reading common to a view that tends to see Tradition as a central part in the defining of the canon.

Tom Wetzel writes:

Given that [the Navarre Commentary Introduction] was written in a conservative RC commentary series, I am willing to bet the farm that in the citation, “[t]he revealed fact of the biblical canon is to be found in the faith of the Church from her very beginnings,” an RC writer means what I have been saying: the canon was revealed to the Church through its conciliar work.

Tom, I feel that you are beginning apriorily with an imperfect assumption as to what a conservative RC holds, and when you encounter a pretty good statement of orthodox RC teaching, you insist on reading it through your preconception.  You are so caught up in the authority of the various Councils that you are overlooking the fact that they taught nothing de novo; the Councils declared and clarified what was ALREADY the revealed faith of the Church.  To use an analogy:  Nicaea did not invent the homoousion; it only articulated it.  Or maybe this: Isaac Newton did not invent gravity, he discovered it.  You are overlooking, or actually denying what I insist is a key phrase in the Navarre statement, i. e., “from the beginning.”  What did your Church begin, Tom?  At some 4th century council?  When do you think orthodox RC’s posit the beginning of the Church?  Clue:  it wasnt at Trent in the 16th century.

Lawrence, I surrender the field on all topics. I understand we will not agree and we share different understandings of the Church.

Well, if Luther could speak like a fool, so can I.  I don’t think Fr. Wells and Mr. Wetzel are too far apart, as I take the former for an orthodox “Caroline divinity” Anglican with a Reformation understanding of Justification and a firm belief in “apostolic order,” and that in more ways than one, while I take Mr. Wetzel for a moderate Anglo-Catholic with some Roman leanings (as befits his origins).  If Mr. Wetzel opposes the “anterior lapse” (read: 1976) that led to the “posterior lapse” (read: 2003)—as I hope he does, together with the rest of Catholic Christendom—then their differences, happily, are those of degree rather than of kind.

Oh, on other thing—you might find this interesting as well:

http://threehierarchies.blogspot.com/2007/04/apocrypha-and-jews.html

Regarding the Wells/TomW controversy, I wonder if it might be helpful to point out (what will be obvious to some) that when the Opus Dei commentators say “The revealed fact of the biblical canon is to be found in the faith of the Church from her very beginnings”, there is an implicit appeal to the notion of the ordinary magisterium: “Magnopere curandum est ut id teneamus, quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est; hoc est etenim vere proprieque catholicum” (see also the Catechism 889-892). Thus conciliar authority for the canon of scripture is only relevant to those books (such as Heb and Rev) that have been the subject of controversy. (Much as I’m open to Matt’s belief in an apostolic benison for Heb and Rev, I’m not aware of the strand of sacred tradition that attests to it.)

Irrelevantly, I just want to thank Dr Tighe for the “posterior lapse”: that is one to cut out and keep.

Christi sit lectoribus pax

Sorry, I should have written “ordinary and universal magisterium” above.

There’s a useful, but non-infallible summary on the EWTN site.

Dr. Tighe said:
“...St. Jerome was alone in his opinion among the Fathers of the Church, unless one counts the obscure Constantinopolitan Arian named Aerius (ca. 360 AD) as a “Father” or unless one includes St. Athanasius, who vacillated on the issue, on Jerome’s side.”

I have to disagree with Dr. Tighe’s statement that St. Jerome was alone among the Church Fathers in rejecting the Canonicity of the Dueterocanonical books because it simply isn’t the case.

St. Athanasius in no uncertain terms addition rejected the canonicity of the Deuterocanonical books (though he like St. Jerome quoted from them frequently “for instruction in the word of godliness”—and both St. Jerome and St. Athanasius affirmed this purpose for the “Dueterocanon”). St. Athanasius’ well known 39th Festal Letter, which addresses the issue of the Canon in the Church, can be read here: http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2806039.htm).
And St. Athanasius and St. Jerome are not alone on this issue. One of the earliest listings of the OT Canon, from Melito of Sardis, the Bishop of Sardis in 170 A.D. does not include the Dueterocanonical books. Also, Gregory of Nazianzus, Cyril of Jerusalem, Amphilochus, Eusebius, St. Epiphanius, St. Hilary of Poitiers and Rufinus, Basil the Great, among others East and West rejected the canonicity of the Dueterocanonical books.

God Bless,
William

Gal 3:26 For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. 27For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.

For an example of the Church Fathers referenced in my last post as having rejected the canonicity of the Dueterocanonical books, here are the words of the Western Father Rufinas on the issue of the Canon in his very notable exposition of the Apostles Creed:
37. Of the Old Testament, therefore, first of all there have been handed down five books of Moses, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy; Then Jesus Nave, (Joshua the son of Nun), The Book of Judges together with Ruth; then four books of Kings (Reigns), which the Hebrews reckon two; the Book of Omissions, which is entitled the Book of Days (Chronicles), and two books of Ezra (Ezra and Nehemiah), which the Hebrews reckon one, and Esther; of the Prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel; moreover of the twelve (minor) Prophets, one book; Job also and the Psalms of David, each one book. Solomon gave three books to the Churches, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Canticles. These comprise the books of the Old Testament.

Of the New there are four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John; the Acts of the Apostles, written by Luke; fourteen Epistles of the Apostle Paul, two of the Apostle Peter, one of James, brother of the Lord and Apostle, one of Jude, three of John, the Revelation of John. These are the books which the Fathers have comprised within the Canon, and from which they would have us deduce the proofs of our faith.

38. But it should be known that there are also other books which our fathers call not “Canonical” but “Ecclesiastical:” that is to say, Wisdom, called the Wisdom of Solomon, and another Wisdom, called the Wisdom of the Son of Syrach, which last-mentioned the Latins called by the general title Ecclesiasticus, designating not the author of the book, but the character of the writing. To the same class belong the Book of Tobit, and the Book of Judith, and the Books of the Maccabees. In the New Testament the little book which is called the Book of the Pastor of Hermas, [and that] which is called The Two Ways, or the Judgment of Peter; all of which they would have read in the Churches, but not appealed to for the confirmation of doctrine. The other writings they have named “Apocrypha.” These they would not have read in the Churches.

These are the traditions which the Fathers have handed down to us, which, as I said, I have thought it opportune to set forth in this place, for the instruction of those who are being taught the first elements of the Church and of the Faith, that they may know from what fountains of the Word of God their draughts must be taken.
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2711.htm

God Bless,
William

Gal 3:26 For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. 27For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.

Sorry for my typo filled and poorly set up first post