http://www.scribd.com/doc/64763059/Theo101-Elev-amp-Fall
http://www.scribd.com/doc/66012475/Theo101-Incarnation
http://www.scribd.com/doc/66012791/Jesus-Christ-2
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Authority is transferred by ordination
APOSTOLIC AUTHORITY AND SUCCESSION
By John Salsa
Scripture
Acts 1:15-26 - the first thing Peter does after Jesus ascends into heaven is implement apostolic succession. Matthias is ordained with full apostolic authority. Only the Catholic Church can demonstrate an unbroken apostolic lineage to the apostles in union with Peter through the sacrament of ordination and thereby claim to teach with Christ's own authority.
Acts 1:20 - a successor of Judas is chosen. The authority of his office (his "bishopric") is respected notwithstanding his egregious sin. The necessity to have apostolic succession in order for the Church to survive was understood by all. God never said, "I'll give you leaders with authority for about 400 years, but after the Bible is compiled, you are all on your own."
Acts 1:22 - literally, "one must be ordained" to be a witness with us of His resurrection. Apostolic ordination is required in order to teach with Christ's authority.
Acts 6:6 - apostolic authority is transferred through the laying on of hands (ordination). This authority has transferred beyond the original twelve apostles as the Church has grown.
Acts 9:17-19 - even Paul, who was directly chosen by Christ, only becomes a minister after the laying on of hands by a bishop. This is a powerful proof-text for the necessity of sacramental ordination in order to be a legitimate successor of the apostles.
Acts 13:3 - apostolic authority is transferred through the laying on of hands (ordination). This authority must come from a Catholic bishop.
Acts 14:23 - the apostles and newly-ordained men appointed elders to have authority throughout the Church.
Acts 15:22-27 - preachers of the Word must be sent by the bishops in union with the Church. We must trace this authority to the apostles.
2 Cor. 1:21-22 - Paul writes that God has commissioned certain men and sealed them with the Holy Spirit as a guarantee.
Col 1:25 - Paul calls his position a divine "office." An office has successors. It does not terminate at death. Or it's not an office. See also Heb. 7:23 – an office continues with another successor after the previous office-holder’s death.
1 Tim. 3:1 - Paul uses the word "episcopoi" (bishop) which requires an office. Everyone understood that Paul's use of episcopoi and office meant it would carry on after his death by those who would succeed him.
1 Tim. 4:14 - again, apostolic authority is transferred through the laying on of hands (ordination).
1 Tim. 5:22 - Paul urges Timothy to be careful in laying on the hands (ordaining others). The gift of authority is a reality and cannot be used indiscriminately.
2 Tim. 1:6 - Paul again reminds Timothy the unique gift of God that he received through the laying on of hands.
2 Tim. 4:1-6 - at end of Paul's life, Paul charges Timothy with the office of his ministry . We must trace true apostolic lineage back to a Catholic bishop.
2 Tim. 2:2 - this verse shows God's intention is to transfer authority to successors (here, Paul to Timothy to 3rd to 4th generation). It goes beyond the death of the apostles.
Titus 1:5; Luke 10:1 - the elders of the Church are appointed and hold authority. God has His children participate in Christ's work.
1 John 4:6 - whoever knows God listens to us (the bishops and the successors to the apostles). This is the way we discern truth and error (not just by reading the Bible and interpreting it for ourselves).
Exodus 18:25-26 - Moses appoints various heads over the people of God. We see a hierarchy, a transfer of authority and succession.
Exodus 40:15 - the physical anointing shows that God intended a perpetual priesthood with an identifiable unbroken succession.
Numbers 3:3 - the sons of Aaron were formally "anointed" priests in "ordination" to minister in the priests' "office."
Numbers 16:40 - shows God's intention of unbroken succession within His kingdom on earth. Unless a priest was ordained by Aaron and his descendants, he had no authority.
Numbers 27:18-20 - shows God's intention that, through the "laying on of hands," one is commissioned and has authority.
Deut. 34:9 - Moses laid hands upon Joshua, and because of this, Joshua was obeyed as successor, full of the spirit of wisdom.
Sirach 45:15 - Moses ordains Aaron and anoints him with oil. There is a transfer of authority through formal ordination.
Early Church Fathers
"Since therefore I have, in the persons before mentioned, beheld the whole multitude of you in faith and love, I exhort you to study to do all things with a divine harmony, while your bishop presides in the place of God, and your presbyters in the place of the assembly of the apostles, along with your deacons, who are most dear to me, and are entrusted with the ministry of Jesus Christ, who was with the Father before the beginning of time, and in the end was revealed…Let nothing exist among you that may divide you ; but be ye united with your bishop, and those that preside over you, as a type and evidence of your immortality." Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to the Magnesians, 6 (c. A.D. 110).
"For, since ye are subject to the bishop as to Jesus Christ, ye appear to me to live not after the manner of men, but according to Jesus Christ, who died for us, in order, by believing in His death, ye may escape from death. It is therefore necessary that, as ye indeed do, so without the bishop ye should do nothing, but should also be subject to the presbytery, as to the apostle of Jesus Christ, who is our hope, in whom, if we live, we shall [at last] be found. It is fitting also that the deacons, as being [the ministers] of the mysteries of Jesus Christ, should in every respect be pleasing to all. For they are not ministers of meat and drink, but servants of the Church of God. They are bound, therefore, to avoid all grounds of accusation [against them], as they would do fire." Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to the Trallians, 2 (c. A.D. 110).
"And do ye also reverence your bishop as Christ Himself, according as the blessed apostles have enjoined you. He that is within the altar is pure, wherefore also he is obedient to the bishop and presbyters: but he that is without is one that does anything apart from the bishop, the presbyters, and the deacons. Such a person is defiled in his conscience, and is worse than an infidel. For what is the bishop but one who beyond all others possesses all power and authority, so far as it is possible for a man to possess it, who according to his ability has been made an imitator of the Christ Of God? And what is the presbytery but a sacred assembly, the counselors and assessors of the bishop? And what are the deacons but imitators of the angelic powers, fulfilling a pure and blameless ministry unto him, as the holy Stephen did to the blessed James, Timothy and Linus to Paul, Anencletus and Clement to Peter? He, therefore, that will not yield obedience to such, must needs be one utterly without God, an impious man who despises Christ, and depreciates His appointments." Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to the Trallians, 7 (c. A.D. 110).
"I must not omit an account of the conduct also of the heretics--how frivolous it is, how worldly, how merely human, without seriousness, without authority, without discipline, as suits their creed…At one time they put novices in office; at another time, men who are bound to some secular employment; at another, persons who have apostatized from us, to bind them by vainglory, since they cannot by the truth. Nowhere is promotion easier than in the camp of rebels, where the mere fact of being there is a foremost service. And so it comes to pass that today one man is their bishop, to-morrow another; to-day he is a deacon who to-morrow is a reader; to-day he is a presbyter who tomorrow is a layman. For even on laymen do they impose the functions of priesthood." Tertullian, On Prescription Against Heretics, 41 (c. A.D. 200).
"Since, according to my opinion, the grades here in the Church, of bishops, presbyters, deacons, are imitations of the angelic glory, and of that economy which, the Scriptures say, awaits those who, following the footsteps of the apostles, have lived in perfection of righteousness according to the Gospel. For these taken up in the clouds, the apostle writes, will first minister [as deacons], then be classed in the presbyterate, by promotion in glory (for glory differs from glory) till they grow into 'a perfect man.'" Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, 13 (A.D. 202).
"And that you may be still more confident, that repenting thus truly there remains for you a sure hope of salvation, listen to a tale? Which is not a tale but a narrative, handed down and committed to the custody of memory, about the Apostle John. For when, on the tyrant's death, he returned to Ephesus from the isle of Patmos, he went away, being invited, to the contiguous territories of the nations, here to appoint bishops, there to set in order whole Churches, there to ordain such as were marked out by the Spirit. Having come to one of the cities not far off (the name of which some give), and having put the brethren to rest in other matters, at last, looking to the bishop appointed, and seeing a youth, powerful in body, comely in appearance, and ardent, said, 'This (youth) I commit to you in all earnestness, in the presence of the Church, and with Christ as witness.' And on his accepting and promising all, he gave the same injunction and testimony." Clement of Alexandria, Who is the rich man that shall be saved?, 42 (A.D. 210).
"…these from the Presbyters and Deacons of the Mareotis, a home of the Catholic Church which is under the most Reverend Bishop Athanasius, we address this testimony by those whose names are underwritten:--Whereas Theognius, Maris, Macedonius, Theodorus, Ursacius, and Valens, as if sent by all the Bishops who assembled at Tyre, came into our Diocese alleging that they had received orders to investigate certain ecclesiastical affairs, among which they spoke of the breaking of a cup of the Lord, of which information was given them by Ischyras, whom they brought with them, and who says that he is a Presbyter, although he is not,-for he was ordained by the Presbyter Colluthus who pretended to the Episcopate… For neither is he a Presbyter of the Catholic Church nor does he possess a church, nor has a cup ever been broken, but the whole story is false and an invention.” Athanasius, Defence Against the Arians, 76 (A.D. 347).
"The Cathari are schismatics; but it seemed good to the ancient authorities, I mean Cyprian and our own Firmilianus, to reject all these, Cathari, Encratites, and Hydroparastatae, by one common condemnation, because the origin of separation arose through schism, and those who had apostatized from the Church had no longer on them the grace of the Holy Spirit, for it ceased to be imparted when the continuity was broken. The first separatists had received their ordination from the Fathers, and possessed the spiritual gift by the laying on of their hands. But they who were broken off had become laymen, and, because they are no longer able to confer on others that grace of the Holy Spirit from which they themselves are fallen away, they had no authority either to baptize or to ordain. And therefore those who were from time to time baptized by them, were ordered, as though baptized by laymen, to come to the church to be purified by the Church's true baptism. Nevertheless, since it has seemed to some of those of Asia that, for the sake of management of the majority, their baptism should be accepted, let it be accepted. We must, however, perceive the iniquitous action of the Encratites…” Basil, To Amphilochius, Epistle 188:1 (A.D. 347).
“I may not sit in the presence of a presbyter; he, if I sin, may deliver me to Satan, 'for the destruction of the flesh that the spirit may be saved.' Under the old law he who disobeyed the priests was put outside the camp and stoned by the people, or else he was beheaded and expiated his contempt with his blood. But now the disobedient person is cut down with the spiritual sword, or he is expelled from the church and torn to pieces by ravening demons. Should the entreaties of your brethren induce you to take orders, I shall rejoice that you are lifted up, and fear lest you may be cast down. You will say: 'If a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work.' I know that; but you should add what follows: such an one "must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, chaste, of good behavior, given to hospitality, apt to teach, not given to wine, no striker but patient.' After fully explaining the qualifications of a bishop the apostle speaks of ministers of the third degree with equal care." Jerome, To Heliodorus, Epistle 14:8 (A.D. 379).
"The bread again is at first common bread, but when the sacramental action consecrates it, it is called, and becomes, the Body of Christ. So with the sacramental oil; so with the wine: though before the benediction they are of little value, each of them, after the sanctification bestowed by the Spirit, has its several operations. The same power of the word, again, also makes the priest venerable and honourable, separated, by the new blessing bestowed upon him, from his community with the mass of men. While but yesterday he was one of the mass, one of the people, he is suddenly rendered a guide, a president, a teacher of righteousness, an instructor in hidden mysteries; and this he does without being at all changed in body or in form; but, while continuing to be in all appearance the man he was before, being, by some unseen power and grace, transformed in respect of his unseen soul to the higher condition." Gregory of Nyssa, On the Baptism of Christ (ante A.D. 394).
“In like manner as if there take place an ordination of clergy in order to form a congregation of people, although the congregation of people follow not, yet there remains in the ordained persons the Sacrament of Ordination; and if, for any fault, any be removed from his office, he will not be without the Sacrament of the Lord once for all set upon him, albeit continuing unto condemnation.” Augustine, On the Good of Marriage, 24:32 (A.D. 401).
"When a priest is ordained, while the bishop is blessing [him] and holding his hands over his head, let all the priests also, who are present, hold their hands close to the hands of the bishop above his head." Council of Chalcedon, Canon 3 (A.D. 451).
"As often as God's mercy deigns to bring round the day of His gifts to us, there is, dearly-beloved, just and reasonable cause for rejoicing, if only our appointment to the office be referred to the praise of Him who gave it. For though this recognition of God may well be found in all His priests, yet I take it to be peculiarly binding on me, who, regarding my own utter insignificance and the greatness of the office undertaken, ought myself also to utter that exclamation of the Prophet, 'Lord, I heard Thy speech and was afraid: I considered Thy works and was dismayed.'…And finally, now that the mystery of this Divine priesthood has descended to human agency, it runs not by the line of birth, nor is that which flesh and blood created, chosen, but without regard to the privilege of paternity and succession by inheritance, those men are received by the Church as its rulers whom the Holy Ghost prepares: so that in the people of God's adoption, the whole body of which is priestly and royal, it is not the prerogative of earthly origin which obtains the unction, but the condescension of Divine grace which creates the bishop." Pope Leo the Great [regn. A.D. 440-461], Sermons, 3:1 (ante A.D. 461).
By John Salsa
Scripture
Acts 1:15-26 - the first thing Peter does after Jesus ascends into heaven is implement apostolic succession. Matthias is ordained with full apostolic authority. Only the Catholic Church can demonstrate an unbroken apostolic lineage to the apostles in union with Peter through the sacrament of ordination and thereby claim to teach with Christ's own authority.
Acts 1:20 - a successor of Judas is chosen. The authority of his office (his "bishopric") is respected notwithstanding his egregious sin. The necessity to have apostolic succession in order for the Church to survive was understood by all. God never said, "I'll give you leaders with authority for about 400 years, but after the Bible is compiled, you are all on your own."
Acts 1:22 - literally, "one must be ordained" to be a witness with us of His resurrection. Apostolic ordination is required in order to teach with Christ's authority.
Acts 6:6 - apostolic authority is transferred through the laying on of hands (ordination). This authority has transferred beyond the original twelve apostles as the Church has grown.
Acts 9:17-19 - even Paul, who was directly chosen by Christ, only becomes a minister after the laying on of hands by a bishop. This is a powerful proof-text for the necessity of sacramental ordination in order to be a legitimate successor of the apostles.
Acts 13:3 - apostolic authority is transferred through the laying on of hands (ordination). This authority must come from a Catholic bishop.
Acts 14:23 - the apostles and newly-ordained men appointed elders to have authority throughout the Church.
Acts 15:22-27 - preachers of the Word must be sent by the bishops in union with the Church. We must trace this authority to the apostles.
2 Cor. 1:21-22 - Paul writes that God has commissioned certain men and sealed them with the Holy Spirit as a guarantee.
Col 1:25 - Paul calls his position a divine "office." An office has successors. It does not terminate at death. Or it's not an office. See also Heb. 7:23 – an office continues with another successor after the previous office-holder’s death.
1 Tim. 3:1 - Paul uses the word "episcopoi" (bishop) which requires an office. Everyone understood that Paul's use of episcopoi and office meant it would carry on after his death by those who would succeed him.
1 Tim. 4:14 - again, apostolic authority is transferred through the laying on of hands (ordination).
1 Tim. 5:22 - Paul urges Timothy to be careful in laying on the hands (ordaining others). The gift of authority is a reality and cannot be used indiscriminately.
2 Tim. 1:6 - Paul again reminds Timothy the unique gift of God that he received through the laying on of hands.
2 Tim. 4:1-6 - at end of Paul's life, Paul charges Timothy with the office of his ministry . We must trace true apostolic lineage back to a Catholic bishop.
2 Tim. 2:2 - this verse shows God's intention is to transfer authority to successors (here, Paul to Timothy to 3rd to 4th generation). It goes beyond the death of the apostles.
Titus 1:5; Luke 10:1 - the elders of the Church are appointed and hold authority. God has His children participate in Christ's work.
1 John 4:6 - whoever knows God listens to us (the bishops and the successors to the apostles). This is the way we discern truth and error (not just by reading the Bible and interpreting it for ourselves).
Exodus 18:25-26 - Moses appoints various heads over the people of God. We see a hierarchy, a transfer of authority and succession.
Exodus 40:15 - the physical anointing shows that God intended a perpetual priesthood with an identifiable unbroken succession.
Numbers 3:3 - the sons of Aaron were formally "anointed" priests in "ordination" to minister in the priests' "office."
Numbers 16:40 - shows God's intention of unbroken succession within His kingdom on earth. Unless a priest was ordained by Aaron and his descendants, he had no authority.
Numbers 27:18-20 - shows God's intention that, through the "laying on of hands," one is commissioned and has authority.
Deut. 34:9 - Moses laid hands upon Joshua, and because of this, Joshua was obeyed as successor, full of the spirit of wisdom.
Sirach 45:15 - Moses ordains Aaron and anoints him with oil. There is a transfer of authority through formal ordination.
Early Church Fathers
"Since therefore I have, in the persons before mentioned, beheld the whole multitude of you in faith and love, I exhort you to study to do all things with a divine harmony, while your bishop presides in the place of God, and your presbyters in the place of the assembly of the apostles, along with your deacons, who are most dear to me, and are entrusted with the ministry of Jesus Christ, who was with the Father before the beginning of time, and in the end was revealed…Let nothing exist among you that may divide you ; but be ye united with your bishop, and those that preside over you, as a type and evidence of your immortality." Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to the Magnesians, 6 (c. A.D. 110).
"For, since ye are subject to the bishop as to Jesus Christ, ye appear to me to live not after the manner of men, but according to Jesus Christ, who died for us, in order, by believing in His death, ye may escape from death. It is therefore necessary that, as ye indeed do, so without the bishop ye should do nothing, but should also be subject to the presbytery, as to the apostle of Jesus Christ, who is our hope, in whom, if we live, we shall [at last] be found. It is fitting also that the deacons, as being [the ministers] of the mysteries of Jesus Christ, should in every respect be pleasing to all. For they are not ministers of meat and drink, but servants of the Church of God. They are bound, therefore, to avoid all grounds of accusation [against them], as they would do fire." Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to the Trallians, 2 (c. A.D. 110).
"And do ye also reverence your bishop as Christ Himself, according as the blessed apostles have enjoined you. He that is within the altar is pure, wherefore also he is obedient to the bishop and presbyters: but he that is without is one that does anything apart from the bishop, the presbyters, and the deacons. Such a person is defiled in his conscience, and is worse than an infidel. For what is the bishop but one who beyond all others possesses all power and authority, so far as it is possible for a man to possess it, who according to his ability has been made an imitator of the Christ Of God? And what is the presbytery but a sacred assembly, the counselors and assessors of the bishop? And what are the deacons but imitators of the angelic powers, fulfilling a pure and blameless ministry unto him, as the holy Stephen did to the blessed James, Timothy and Linus to Paul, Anencletus and Clement to Peter? He, therefore, that will not yield obedience to such, must needs be one utterly without God, an impious man who despises Christ, and depreciates His appointments." Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to the Trallians, 7 (c. A.D. 110).
"I must not omit an account of the conduct also of the heretics--how frivolous it is, how worldly, how merely human, without seriousness, without authority, without discipline, as suits their creed…At one time they put novices in office; at another time, men who are bound to some secular employment; at another, persons who have apostatized from us, to bind them by vainglory, since they cannot by the truth. Nowhere is promotion easier than in the camp of rebels, where the mere fact of being there is a foremost service. And so it comes to pass that today one man is their bishop, to-morrow another; to-day he is a deacon who to-morrow is a reader; to-day he is a presbyter who tomorrow is a layman. For even on laymen do they impose the functions of priesthood." Tertullian, On Prescription Against Heretics, 41 (c. A.D. 200).
"Since, according to my opinion, the grades here in the Church, of bishops, presbyters, deacons, are imitations of the angelic glory, and of that economy which, the Scriptures say, awaits those who, following the footsteps of the apostles, have lived in perfection of righteousness according to the Gospel. For these taken up in the clouds, the apostle writes, will first minister [as deacons], then be classed in the presbyterate, by promotion in glory (for glory differs from glory) till they grow into 'a perfect man.'" Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, 13 (A.D. 202).
"And that you may be still more confident, that repenting thus truly there remains for you a sure hope of salvation, listen to a tale? Which is not a tale but a narrative, handed down and committed to the custody of memory, about the Apostle John. For when, on the tyrant's death, he returned to Ephesus from the isle of Patmos, he went away, being invited, to the contiguous territories of the nations, here to appoint bishops, there to set in order whole Churches, there to ordain such as were marked out by the Spirit. Having come to one of the cities not far off (the name of which some give), and having put the brethren to rest in other matters, at last, looking to the bishop appointed, and seeing a youth, powerful in body, comely in appearance, and ardent, said, 'This (youth) I commit to you in all earnestness, in the presence of the Church, and with Christ as witness.' And on his accepting and promising all, he gave the same injunction and testimony." Clement of Alexandria, Who is the rich man that shall be saved?, 42 (A.D. 210).
"…these from the Presbyters and Deacons of the Mareotis, a home of the Catholic Church which is under the most Reverend Bishop Athanasius, we address this testimony by those whose names are underwritten:--Whereas Theognius, Maris, Macedonius, Theodorus, Ursacius, and Valens, as if sent by all the Bishops who assembled at Tyre, came into our Diocese alleging that they had received orders to investigate certain ecclesiastical affairs, among which they spoke of the breaking of a cup of the Lord, of which information was given them by Ischyras, whom they brought with them, and who says that he is a Presbyter, although he is not,-for he was ordained by the Presbyter Colluthus who pretended to the Episcopate… For neither is he a Presbyter of the Catholic Church nor does he possess a church, nor has a cup ever been broken, but the whole story is false and an invention.” Athanasius, Defence Against the Arians, 76 (A.D. 347).
"The Cathari are schismatics; but it seemed good to the ancient authorities, I mean Cyprian and our own Firmilianus, to reject all these, Cathari, Encratites, and Hydroparastatae, by one common condemnation, because the origin of separation arose through schism, and those who had apostatized from the Church had no longer on them the grace of the Holy Spirit, for it ceased to be imparted when the continuity was broken. The first separatists had received their ordination from the Fathers, and possessed the spiritual gift by the laying on of their hands. But they who were broken off had become laymen, and, because they are no longer able to confer on others that grace of the Holy Spirit from which they themselves are fallen away, they had no authority either to baptize or to ordain. And therefore those who were from time to time baptized by them, were ordered, as though baptized by laymen, to come to the church to be purified by the Church's true baptism. Nevertheless, since it has seemed to some of those of Asia that, for the sake of management of the majority, their baptism should be accepted, let it be accepted. We must, however, perceive the iniquitous action of the Encratites…” Basil, To Amphilochius, Epistle 188:1 (A.D. 347).
“I may not sit in the presence of a presbyter; he, if I sin, may deliver me to Satan, 'for the destruction of the flesh that the spirit may be saved.' Under the old law he who disobeyed the priests was put outside the camp and stoned by the people, or else he was beheaded and expiated his contempt with his blood. But now the disobedient person is cut down with the spiritual sword, or he is expelled from the church and torn to pieces by ravening demons. Should the entreaties of your brethren induce you to take orders, I shall rejoice that you are lifted up, and fear lest you may be cast down. You will say: 'If a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work.' I know that; but you should add what follows: such an one "must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, chaste, of good behavior, given to hospitality, apt to teach, not given to wine, no striker but patient.' After fully explaining the qualifications of a bishop the apostle speaks of ministers of the third degree with equal care." Jerome, To Heliodorus, Epistle 14:8 (A.D. 379).
"The bread again is at first common bread, but when the sacramental action consecrates it, it is called, and becomes, the Body of Christ. So with the sacramental oil; so with the wine: though before the benediction they are of little value, each of them, after the sanctification bestowed by the Spirit, has its several operations. The same power of the word, again, also makes the priest venerable and honourable, separated, by the new blessing bestowed upon him, from his community with the mass of men. While but yesterday he was one of the mass, one of the people, he is suddenly rendered a guide, a president, a teacher of righteousness, an instructor in hidden mysteries; and this he does without being at all changed in body or in form; but, while continuing to be in all appearance the man he was before, being, by some unseen power and grace, transformed in respect of his unseen soul to the higher condition." Gregory of Nyssa, On the Baptism of Christ (ante A.D. 394).
“In like manner as if there take place an ordination of clergy in order to form a congregation of people, although the congregation of people follow not, yet there remains in the ordained persons the Sacrament of Ordination; and if, for any fault, any be removed from his office, he will not be without the Sacrament of the Lord once for all set upon him, albeit continuing unto condemnation.” Augustine, On the Good of Marriage, 24:32 (A.D. 401).
"When a priest is ordained, while the bishop is blessing [him] and holding his hands over his head, let all the priests also, who are present, hold their hands close to the hands of the bishop above his head." Council of Chalcedon, Canon 3 (A.D. 451).
"As often as God's mercy deigns to bring round the day of His gifts to us, there is, dearly-beloved, just and reasonable cause for rejoicing, if only our appointment to the office be referred to the praise of Him who gave it. For though this recognition of God may well be found in all His priests, yet I take it to be peculiarly binding on me, who, regarding my own utter insignificance and the greatness of the office undertaken, ought myself also to utter that exclamation of the Prophet, 'Lord, I heard Thy speech and was afraid: I considered Thy works and was dismayed.'…And finally, now that the mystery of this Divine priesthood has descended to human agency, it runs not by the line of birth, nor is that which flesh and blood created, chosen, but without regard to the privilege of paternity and succession by inheritance, those men are received by the Church as its rulers whom the Holy Ghost prepares: so that in the people of God's adoption, the whole body of which is priestly and royal, it is not the prerogative of earthly origin which obtains the unction, but the condescension of Divine grace which creates the bishop." Pope Leo the Great [regn. A.D. 440-461], Sermons, 3:1 (ante A.D. 461).
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
The Early Church Fathers on The Church
From Stay Catholic
The early Church was the Catholic Church. It taught infallibly, gave us the New Testament and was made up of three ranks of clergy, bishop, priest and deacon. The idea of “Scripture Alone” didn’t exist nor could it have as the printing press would not be invented for more than a thousand years.
Ignatius of Antioch
Follow your bishop, every one of you, as obediently as Jesus Christ followed the Father. Obey your clergy too as you would the apostles; give your deacons the same reverence that you would to a command of God. Make sure that no step affecting the Church is ever taken by anyone without the bishop’s sanction. The sole Eucharist you should consider valid is one that is celebrated by the bishop himself, or by some person authorized by him. Where the bishop is to be seen, there let all his people be; just as, wherever Jesus Christ is present, there is the Catholic Church (Letter to the Smyrneans 8:2 [A.D. 110]).
In like manner let everyone respect the deacons as they would respect Jesus Christ, and just as they respect the bishop as a type of the Father, and the presbyters as the council of God and college of the apostles. Without these, it cannot be called a Church. I am confident that you accept this, for I have received the exemplar of your love and have it with me in the person of your bishop. His very demeanor is a great lesson and his meekness is his strength. I believe that even the godless do respect him (Letter to the Trallians 3:1-2 [A. D. 110]).
The Martyrdom of Polycarp
When finally he concluded his prayer, after remembering all who had at any time come his way – small folk and great folk, distinguished and undistinguished, and the whole Catholic Church throughout the world – the time for departure came. So they placed him on an ass, and brought him into the city on a great Sabbath (The Martyrdom of Polycarp 8 [A.D. 110]).
Irenaeus
The Catholic Church possesses one and the same faith throughout the whole world, as we have already said (Against Heresies 1:10 [A.D. 189]).
Since therefore we have such proofs, it is not necessary to seek the truth among others which it is easy to obtain from the Church; since the apostles, like a rich man [depositing his money] in a bank, lodged in her hands most copiously all things pertaining to the truth: so that every man, whosoever will, can draw from her the water of life. For she is the entrance to life; all others are thieves and robbers. On this account we are bound to avoid them, but to make choice of the things pertaining to the Church with the utmost diligence, and to lay hold of the tradition of the truth. For how stands the case? Suppose there should arise a dispute relative to some important question among us. Should we not have recourse to the most ancient churches with which the apostles held constant intercourse, and learn from them what is certain and clear in regard to the present question? For how should it be if the apostles themselves had not left us writings? Would it not be necessary [in that case] to follow the course of the tradition which they handed down to those to whom they did commit the churches? (ibid. 3:4).
Tertullian
Where was Marcion then, that shipmaster of Pontus, the zealous student of Stoicism? Where was Valentinus then, the disciple of Platonism? For it is evident that those men lived not so long ago – in the reign of Antoninus for the most part – and that they at first were believers in the doctrine of the Catholic Church, in the church of Rome under the episcopate of the blessed Eleutherus, until on account of their ever restless curiosity, with which they even infected the brethren, they were more than once expelled (On the Prescription Against Heretics 22,30 [A.D.200])
Clement of Alexandria
A multitude of other pieces of advice to particular persons is written in the holy books: some for presbyters, some for bishops and deacons; and others for widows, of whom we shall have opportunity to speak elsewhere (The Instructor of Children 3:12:97:2 [pre-A.D. 202]).
Even here in the Church the gradations of bishops, presbyters, and deacons happen to be imitations, in my opinion, of the angelic glory and of that arrangement which, the Scriptures say, awaits those who have followed in the footsteps of the apostles and who have lived in complete righteousness according to the gospel (Stromateis 6:13:107:2 [post-A.D. 202]).
Hippolytus
When a deacon is to be ordained, he is chosen after the fashion of those things said above, the bishop alone in like manner imposing his hands upon him as we have prescribed. In the ordaining of a deacon, this is the reason why the bishop alone is to impose his hands upon him: He is not ordained to the priesthood, but to serve the bishop and to fulfill the bishop's command. He has no part in the council of the clergy, but is to attend to his own duties and is to acquaint the bishop with such matters as are needful. . . . On a presbyter [priest], however, let the presbyters impose their hands because of the common and like Spirit of the clergy. Even so, the presbyter has only the power to receive [the Spirit], and not the power to give [the Spirit]. That is why a presbyter does not ordain the clergy; for at the ordaining of a presbyter, he but seals while the bishop ordains. (Apostolic Tradition 9 [ca. A.D. 215]).
Origen
Not fornication only, but even marriages make us unfit for ecclesiastical honors; for neither a bishop, nor a presbyter, nor a deacon, nor a widow is able to be twice married (Homilies on Luke, 17 [ca. A.D. 235]).
Cyprian
The spouse of Christ cannot be defiled; she is uncorrupted and chaste. She knows one home . . . Does anyone believe that this unity which comes from divine strength, which is closely connected with the divine sacraments, can be broken asunder in the Church and be separated by the divisions of colliding wills? He who does not hold this unity, does not hold the law of God, does not hold the faith of the Father and the Son, does not hold life and salvation (On the Unity of the Catholic Church 6 [A.D. 251]).
Peter speaks there, on whom the Church was to be built, teaching and showing in the name of the Church, that although a rebellious and arrogant multitude of those who will not hear or obey may depart, yet the Church does not depart from Christ; and they are the Church who are a people united to the priest, and the flock which adheres to its pastor. Whence you ought to know that the bishop is in the Church, and the Church in the bishop; and if any one be not with the bishop, that he is not in the Church, and that those flatter themselves in vain who creep in, not having peace with God’s priests, and think that they communicate secretly with some; while the Church which is Catholic and one, is not cut nor divided, but is indeed connected and bound together by the cement of priests who cohere with one another (Letters 66 [A.D. 253]).
The early Church was the Catholic Church. It taught infallibly, gave us the New Testament and was made up of three ranks of clergy, bishop, priest and deacon. The idea of “Scripture Alone” didn’t exist nor could it have as the printing press would not be invented for more than a thousand years.
Ignatius of Antioch
Follow your bishop, every one of you, as obediently as Jesus Christ followed the Father. Obey your clergy too as you would the apostles; give your deacons the same reverence that you would to a command of God. Make sure that no step affecting the Church is ever taken by anyone without the bishop’s sanction. The sole Eucharist you should consider valid is one that is celebrated by the bishop himself, or by some person authorized by him. Where the bishop is to be seen, there let all his people be; just as, wherever Jesus Christ is present, there is the Catholic Church (Letter to the Smyrneans 8:2 [A.D. 110]).
In like manner let everyone respect the deacons as they would respect Jesus Christ, and just as they respect the bishop as a type of the Father, and the presbyters as the council of God and college of the apostles. Without these, it cannot be called a Church. I am confident that you accept this, for I have received the exemplar of your love and have it with me in the person of your bishop. His very demeanor is a great lesson and his meekness is his strength. I believe that even the godless do respect him (Letter to the Trallians 3:1-2 [A. D. 110]).
The Martyrdom of Polycarp
When finally he concluded his prayer, after remembering all who had at any time come his way – small folk and great folk, distinguished and undistinguished, and the whole Catholic Church throughout the world – the time for departure came. So they placed him on an ass, and brought him into the city on a great Sabbath (The Martyrdom of Polycarp 8 [A.D. 110]).
Irenaeus
The Catholic Church possesses one and the same faith throughout the whole world, as we have already said (Against Heresies 1:10 [A.D. 189]).
Since therefore we have such proofs, it is not necessary to seek the truth among others which it is easy to obtain from the Church; since the apostles, like a rich man [depositing his money] in a bank, lodged in her hands most copiously all things pertaining to the truth: so that every man, whosoever will, can draw from her the water of life. For she is the entrance to life; all others are thieves and robbers. On this account we are bound to avoid them, but to make choice of the things pertaining to the Church with the utmost diligence, and to lay hold of the tradition of the truth. For how stands the case? Suppose there should arise a dispute relative to some important question among us. Should we not have recourse to the most ancient churches with which the apostles held constant intercourse, and learn from them what is certain and clear in regard to the present question? For how should it be if the apostles themselves had not left us writings? Would it not be necessary [in that case] to follow the course of the tradition which they handed down to those to whom they did commit the churches? (ibid. 3:4).
Tertullian
Where was Marcion then, that shipmaster of Pontus, the zealous student of Stoicism? Where was Valentinus then, the disciple of Platonism? For it is evident that those men lived not so long ago – in the reign of Antoninus for the most part – and that they at first were believers in the doctrine of the Catholic Church, in the church of Rome under the episcopate of the blessed Eleutherus, until on account of their ever restless curiosity, with which they even infected the brethren, they were more than once expelled (On the Prescription Against Heretics 22,30 [A.D.200])
Clement of Alexandria
A multitude of other pieces of advice to particular persons is written in the holy books: some for presbyters, some for bishops and deacons; and others for widows, of whom we shall have opportunity to speak elsewhere (The Instructor of Children 3:12:97:2 [pre-A.D. 202]).
Even here in the Church the gradations of bishops, presbyters, and deacons happen to be imitations, in my opinion, of the angelic glory and of that arrangement which, the Scriptures say, awaits those who have followed in the footsteps of the apostles and who have lived in complete righteousness according to the gospel (Stromateis 6:13:107:2 [post-A.D. 202]).
Hippolytus
When a deacon is to be ordained, he is chosen after the fashion of those things said above, the bishop alone in like manner imposing his hands upon him as we have prescribed. In the ordaining of a deacon, this is the reason why the bishop alone is to impose his hands upon him: He is not ordained to the priesthood, but to serve the bishop and to fulfill the bishop's command. He has no part in the council of the clergy, but is to attend to his own duties and is to acquaint the bishop with such matters as are needful. . . . On a presbyter [priest], however, let the presbyters impose their hands because of the common and like Spirit of the clergy. Even so, the presbyter has only the power to receive [the Spirit], and not the power to give [the Spirit]. That is why a presbyter does not ordain the clergy; for at the ordaining of a presbyter, he but seals while the bishop ordains. (Apostolic Tradition 9 [ca. A.D. 215]).
Origen
Not fornication only, but even marriages make us unfit for ecclesiastical honors; for neither a bishop, nor a presbyter, nor a deacon, nor a widow is able to be twice married (Homilies on Luke, 17 [ca. A.D. 235]).
Cyprian
The spouse of Christ cannot be defiled; she is uncorrupted and chaste. She knows one home . . . Does anyone believe that this unity which comes from divine strength, which is closely connected with the divine sacraments, can be broken asunder in the Church and be separated by the divisions of colliding wills? He who does not hold this unity, does not hold the law of God, does not hold the faith of the Father and the Son, does not hold life and salvation (On the Unity of the Catholic Church 6 [A.D. 251]).
Peter speaks there, on whom the Church was to be built, teaching and showing in the name of the Church, that although a rebellious and arrogant multitude of those who will not hear or obey may depart, yet the Church does not depart from Christ; and they are the Church who are a people united to the priest, and the flock which adheres to its pastor. Whence you ought to know that the bishop is in the Church, and the Church in the bishop; and if any one be not with the bishop, that he is not in the Church, and that those flatter themselves in vain who creep in, not having peace with God’s priests, and think that they communicate secretly with some; while the Church which is Catholic and one, is not cut nor divided, but is indeed connected and bound together by the cement of priests who cohere with one another (Letters 66 [A.D. 253]).
Top 10 Scriptural Passages pointing to the Catholic Church
From Scripture Catholic
The following is a list of my Top Ten Scripture passages which Protestants cannot adequately explain without embracing the teachings of the Catholic Church. This list could be extended to a Top 20, a Top 50, or a Top 100, but this list of 10 covers a lot of territory and can be easily comprehended before more extensive apologetics are entertained. The Top 10 list also provides an excellent introduction to Catholic teaching before the reader attempts to consume the more than 2,000 Scripture passages and analyses on this website.
Catholics should become well-versed in these passages so they are able to effectively witness to the truth of the Church. Protestants need to take these verses to heart as they challenge their own beliefs and investigate Catholic teaching. But both should remember that Catholic apologetics is not about being right or wrong. It is about sharing the fullness of the truth that Jesus Christ gave us through His Holy Catholic Church. I also believe that an analysis of these and the other verses on ScriptureCatholic.com demonstrate that the Catholic understanding of Scripture is almost always based on the plain meaning of the words used by the writer, the most reasonable of the various interpretations available, and the position that gives Jesus the most glory by demonstrating His infinite love and mercy for us.
Matthew 16:18-19 / Isaiah 22:22 (Authority)
1 Timothy 3:15 (Authority)
2 Thessalonians 2:15 (Tradition)
1 Peter 3:21 (Baptism)
John 20:23 (Confession)
John 6:53-58, 66-67 (Eucharist)
1 Corinthians 11:27 (Eucharist)
James 5:14-15 (Anointing)
Colossians 1:24 (Suffering)
James 2:24 (Works)
Authority
I. Matthew 16:18-19 / Isaiah 22:22
"And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it. 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."
"And I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David; he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open."
Most Protestants believe that "church" refers to the mass of Christian believers throughout the world, loosely connected to each other by their faith in the Bible alone. But these verses demonstrate that the "Church" Jesus Christ founded is not an invisible body of loosely-connected believers, but a visible and hierarchical institution built upon the person of Peter, who was given supreme authority, an office for dynastic succession, and the gift of infallibility. This Church can only be the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.
In these verses, we see the following. First, Jesus builds His Church (“ecclesia”) upon the person of Peter. As we learned in the previous link on The Church, Jesus changes Simon's name to "Kepha," and says that on this "Kepha" He will build the Church. Kepha, in Aramaic (the language Jesus spoke), means a massive rock formation, and Jesus' use of Kepha to rename Peter signifies Peter's foundational leadership in the Church. (See also Mark 3:16 and John 1:42 where Jesus renames Simon "Cephas" which is a transliteration of the Aramaic "Kepha."). Only the Catholic Church recognizes and proves through an unbroken lineage of successors that her foundation is Peter.
Secondly, Jesus says the powers of death will never prevail against the Church. So even though Jesus appoints sinful human beings such as Peter to lead the Church, Jesus promises that hell will not prevail against her. Because the powers of hell refer to the supernatural, this must mean that the Church, although lead by sinful people, is divinely protected. Because she is so protected, the Church cannot lead the faithful into supernatural error. That is, she is unable to teach error on matters of faith and morals. This inability to teach error on faith and morals is called "infallibility" (it has nothing to do with the sinfulness of the Church's leaders, which deals with "impeccability"). If the Church were not infallible, the powers of death would indeed prevail over her sinful members. The consistent, 2,000 years of the Church’s teaching on faith and morals proves that Jesus has kept His promise.
Third, Jesus gives Peter the keys to the kingdom of heaven. While many Protestants think that the gift of the "keys" means that Jesus appointed Peter as the guardian of the gates of heaven, the "keys" actually refer to Peter's authority over the earthly Church (which Jesus often described as the "kingdom of heaven." Matthew 13:24-52; 25:1-2; Mark 4:26-32; Luke 9:27; 13:19-20, etc.) In the Old Davidic kingdom, the king had a prime minister on whose shoulder God placed the keys of the kingdom (Isaiah 22:22). Similarly, the new kingdom of Christ also has a prime minister (Peter and his successors) who is given the keys of the kingdom. The keys not only represent the authority the prime minister has to rule over God's people in the king's absence, but also the means of effecting dynastic succession to the prime minister's office (for example, in Isaiah 22:20-22, Eliakim replaces Shebna as prime minister in the Old Davidic kingdom). Only the Catholic Church claims and proves a succession of prime ministers (popes) all the way back to Peter, and this succession is facilitated by the passing of the keys of the kingdom.
Finally, Jesus declares to Peter that whatever he binds and looses on earth will be bound and loosed in heaven. As in the Old Davidic kingdom, whenever Peter the prime minister opens, no one shall shut, and whenever he shuts, no one shall open. Jesus, therefore, gives Peter the authority to make decisions that will be ratified in eternity. In order for sinful Peter (and his successors through the passing on of the "keys") to make such decisions, he must be divinely protected. Once again, this evidences Jesus' gift of infallibility to the Church. Only the Catholic Church claims and has proven that her 2,000 year-old teachings on faith and morals, which have never changed, are infallibly proclaimed.
II. 1 Timothy 3:15
"If I am delayed, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth."
Most Protestants believe that the Bible is the pillar and foundation of the truth, and no knowledge outside of the Bible is necessary for our salvation. But then why does Saint Paul write that the Church, and not the Bible, is the pillar and foundation of the truth? This is a powerful text that refutes the Protestant theory of sola Scriptura (Scripture alone) which erroneously holds that the Bible is the sole source of Christian truth (a theory which cannot be found anywhere in the Scriptures). Instead, Saint Paul says the Church is the pillar and bulwark of the truth.
This means that all the truth Jesus left us concerning faith, morality and our salvation flows from a living Church which, as we have learned, is built by Christ upon the rock of Peter and his successors. As the Catholic Church teaches, God has given us His truth in the form of the living word (written Scriptures and oral tradition) and the living teaching authority of the Church, endowed with the gift of binding and loosing. In fact, it is because the Church is the foundation of truth that we believe in the Bible. This is because the Catholic Church put the Bible together by determining which books were inspired and which books were not. The Church completed its selection of the "canon of Scripture" at the end of the fourth century. If the Catholic Church were not the pinnacle and bulwark of the truth, our belief in the Bible would be without foundation.
The Church's compilation of the Bible illuminates the error of sola Scriptura. As alluded to above, Protestants generally believe that God has revealed everything that is necessary for our salvation through the Bible alone. Consequently, they also believe that no knowledge found outside of the Bible regarding the Christian faith is necessary for our salvation. However, the knowledge of which Scriptures belong in the Bible and which Scriptures do not is necessary for our salvation because if we didn't know this we could be led into error. Further, this knowledge could only come from God because human beings cannot necessarily discern divine inspiration.
The problem, therefore, with sola Scriptura, is that the knowledge of which Scriptures are inspired and which ones are not is not contained in the Bible. The Bible does not have an "inspired table of contents." Instead, this knowledge of the canon of Scripture is a revelation from God that is necessary for our salvation, and yet came to us from outside the Bible . This revelation was given to the Holy Catholic Church, and this historical and theological fact destroys the doctrine of sola Scriptura (interestingly, while Protestants reject the authority of the Catholic Church on most matters, they accept her authority in determining the New Testament canon of Scripture; we pejoratively call such picking and choosing which doctrines to believe and which doctrines to reject "Cafeteria Catholicism").
If I were a Protestant trying to prove sola Scriptura, and there was a verse that said "the Bible is the pillar and bulwark of the truth," I would be proclaiming that verse from the roof tops. At the same time, if I were a Protestant, I would have to ignore 1 Timothy 3:15 to continue my protest of the Catholic faith.
To read the rest: Scripture Catholic
The following is a list of my Top Ten Scripture passages which Protestants cannot adequately explain without embracing the teachings of the Catholic Church. This list could be extended to a Top 20, a Top 50, or a Top 100, but this list of 10 covers a lot of territory and can be easily comprehended before more extensive apologetics are entertained. The Top 10 list also provides an excellent introduction to Catholic teaching before the reader attempts to consume the more than 2,000 Scripture passages and analyses on this website.
Catholics should become well-versed in these passages so they are able to effectively witness to the truth of the Church. Protestants need to take these verses to heart as they challenge their own beliefs and investigate Catholic teaching. But both should remember that Catholic apologetics is not about being right or wrong. It is about sharing the fullness of the truth that Jesus Christ gave us through His Holy Catholic Church. I also believe that an analysis of these and the other verses on ScriptureCatholic.com demonstrate that the Catholic understanding of Scripture is almost always based on the plain meaning of the words used by the writer, the most reasonable of the various interpretations available, and the position that gives Jesus the most glory by demonstrating His infinite love and mercy for us.
Matthew 16:18-19 / Isaiah 22:22 (Authority)
1 Timothy 3:15 (Authority)
2 Thessalonians 2:15 (Tradition)
1 Peter 3:21 (Baptism)
John 20:23 (Confession)
John 6:53-58, 66-67 (Eucharist)
1 Corinthians 11:27 (Eucharist)
James 5:14-15 (Anointing)
Colossians 1:24 (Suffering)
James 2:24 (Works)
Authority
I. Matthew 16:18-19 / Isaiah 22:22
"And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it. 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."
"And I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David; he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open."
Most Protestants believe that "church" refers to the mass of Christian believers throughout the world, loosely connected to each other by their faith in the Bible alone. But these verses demonstrate that the "Church" Jesus Christ founded is not an invisible body of loosely-connected believers, but a visible and hierarchical institution built upon the person of Peter, who was given supreme authority, an office for dynastic succession, and the gift of infallibility. This Church can only be the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.
In these verses, we see the following. First, Jesus builds His Church (“ecclesia”) upon the person of Peter. As we learned in the previous link on The Church, Jesus changes Simon's name to "Kepha," and says that on this "Kepha" He will build the Church. Kepha, in Aramaic (the language Jesus spoke), means a massive rock formation, and Jesus' use of Kepha to rename Peter signifies Peter's foundational leadership in the Church. (See also Mark 3:16 and John 1:42 where Jesus renames Simon "Cephas" which is a transliteration of the Aramaic "Kepha."). Only the Catholic Church recognizes and proves through an unbroken lineage of successors that her foundation is Peter.
Secondly, Jesus says the powers of death will never prevail against the Church. So even though Jesus appoints sinful human beings such as Peter to lead the Church, Jesus promises that hell will not prevail against her. Because the powers of hell refer to the supernatural, this must mean that the Church, although lead by sinful people, is divinely protected. Because she is so protected, the Church cannot lead the faithful into supernatural error. That is, she is unable to teach error on matters of faith and morals. This inability to teach error on faith and morals is called "infallibility" (it has nothing to do with the sinfulness of the Church's leaders, which deals with "impeccability"). If the Church were not infallible, the powers of death would indeed prevail over her sinful members. The consistent, 2,000 years of the Church’s teaching on faith and morals proves that Jesus has kept His promise.
Third, Jesus gives Peter the keys to the kingdom of heaven. While many Protestants think that the gift of the "keys" means that Jesus appointed Peter as the guardian of the gates of heaven, the "keys" actually refer to Peter's authority over the earthly Church (which Jesus often described as the "kingdom of heaven." Matthew 13:24-52; 25:1-2; Mark 4:26-32; Luke 9:27; 13:19-20, etc.) In the Old Davidic kingdom, the king had a prime minister on whose shoulder God placed the keys of the kingdom (Isaiah 22:22). Similarly, the new kingdom of Christ also has a prime minister (Peter and his successors) who is given the keys of the kingdom. The keys not only represent the authority the prime minister has to rule over God's people in the king's absence, but also the means of effecting dynastic succession to the prime minister's office (for example, in Isaiah 22:20-22, Eliakim replaces Shebna as prime minister in the Old Davidic kingdom). Only the Catholic Church claims and proves a succession of prime ministers (popes) all the way back to Peter, and this succession is facilitated by the passing of the keys of the kingdom.
Finally, Jesus declares to Peter that whatever he binds and looses on earth will be bound and loosed in heaven. As in the Old Davidic kingdom, whenever Peter the prime minister opens, no one shall shut, and whenever he shuts, no one shall open. Jesus, therefore, gives Peter the authority to make decisions that will be ratified in eternity. In order for sinful Peter (and his successors through the passing on of the "keys") to make such decisions, he must be divinely protected. Once again, this evidences Jesus' gift of infallibility to the Church. Only the Catholic Church claims and has proven that her 2,000 year-old teachings on faith and morals, which have never changed, are infallibly proclaimed.
II. 1 Timothy 3:15
"If I am delayed, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth."
Most Protestants believe that the Bible is the pillar and foundation of the truth, and no knowledge outside of the Bible is necessary for our salvation. But then why does Saint Paul write that the Church, and not the Bible, is the pillar and foundation of the truth? This is a powerful text that refutes the Protestant theory of sola Scriptura (Scripture alone) which erroneously holds that the Bible is the sole source of Christian truth (a theory which cannot be found anywhere in the Scriptures). Instead, Saint Paul says the Church is the pillar and bulwark of the truth.
This means that all the truth Jesus left us concerning faith, morality and our salvation flows from a living Church which, as we have learned, is built by Christ upon the rock of Peter and his successors. As the Catholic Church teaches, God has given us His truth in the form of the living word (written Scriptures and oral tradition) and the living teaching authority of the Church, endowed with the gift of binding and loosing. In fact, it is because the Church is the foundation of truth that we believe in the Bible. This is because the Catholic Church put the Bible together by determining which books were inspired and which books were not. The Church completed its selection of the "canon of Scripture" at the end of the fourth century. If the Catholic Church were not the pinnacle and bulwark of the truth, our belief in the Bible would be without foundation.
The Church's compilation of the Bible illuminates the error of sola Scriptura. As alluded to above, Protestants generally believe that God has revealed everything that is necessary for our salvation through the Bible alone. Consequently, they also believe that no knowledge found outside of the Bible regarding the Christian faith is necessary for our salvation. However, the knowledge of which Scriptures belong in the Bible and which Scriptures do not is necessary for our salvation because if we didn't know this we could be led into error. Further, this knowledge could only come from God because human beings cannot necessarily discern divine inspiration.
The problem, therefore, with sola Scriptura, is that the knowledge of which Scriptures are inspired and which ones are not is not contained in the Bible. The Bible does not have an "inspired table of contents." Instead, this knowledge of the canon of Scripture is a revelation from God that is necessary for our salvation, and yet came to us from outside the Bible . This revelation was given to the Holy Catholic Church, and this historical and theological fact destroys the doctrine of sola Scriptura (interestingly, while Protestants reject the authority of the Catholic Church on most matters, they accept her authority in determining the New Testament canon of Scripture; we pejoratively call such picking and choosing which doctrines to believe and which doctrines to reject "Cafeteria Catholicism").
If I were a Protestant trying to prove sola Scriptura, and there was a verse that said "the Bible is the pillar and bulwark of the truth," I would be proclaiming that verse from the roof tops. At the same time, if I were a Protestant, I would have to ignore 1 Timothy 3:15 to continue my protest of the Catholic faith.
To read the rest: Scripture Catholic
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Only the Catholic Church has existed since the time of Jesus
By Catholic.com
AN UNBROKEN HISTORY
Jesus said his Church would be "the light of the world." He then noted that "a city set on a hill cannot be hid" (Matt. 5:14). This means his Church is a visible organization. It must have characteristics that clearly identify it and that distinguish it from other churches. Jesus promised, "I will build my Church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it" (Matt. 16:18). This means that his Church will never be destroyed and will never fall away from him. His Church will survive until his return.
Among the Christian churches, only the Catholic Church has existed since the time of Jesus. Every other Christian church is an offshoot of the Catholic Church. The Eastern Orthodox churches broke away from unity with the pope in 1054. The Protestant churches were established during the Reformation, which began in 1517. (Most of today’s Protestant churches are actually offshoots of the original Protestant offshoots.)
Only the Catholic Church existed in the tenth century, in the fifth century, and in the first century, faithfully teaching the doctrines given by Christ to the apostles, omitting nothing. The line of popes can be traced back, in unbroken succession, to Peter himself. This is unequaled by any institution in history.
Even the oldest government is new compared to the papacy, and the churches that send out door-to-door missionaries are young compared to the Catholic Church. Many of these churches began as recently as the nineteenth or twentieth centuries. Some even began during your own lifetime. None of them can claim to be the Church Jesus established.
The Catholic Church has existed for nearly 2,000 years, despite constant opposition from the world. This is testimony to the Church’s divine origin. It must be more than a merely human organization, especially considering that its human members— even some of its leaders—have been unwise, corrupt, or prone to heresy.
Any merely human organization with such members would have collapsed early on. The Catholic Church is today the most vigorous church in the world (and the largest, with a billion members: one sixth of the human race), and that is testimony not to the cleverness of the Church’s leaders, but to the protection of the Holy Spirit.
FOUR MARKS OF THE TRUE CHURCH
If we wish to locate the Church founded by Jesus, we need to locate the one that has the four chief marks or qualities of his Church. The Church we seek must be one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.
The Church Is One (Rom. 12:5, 1 Cor. 10:17, 12:13, CCC 813–822)
Jesus established only one Church, not a collection of differing churches (Lutheran, Baptist, Anglican, and so on). The Bible says the Church is the bride of Christ (Eph. 5:23–32). Jesus can have but one spouse, and his spouse is the Catholic Church.
His Church also teaches just one set of doctrines, which must be the same as those taught by the apostles (Jude 3). This is the unity of belief to which Scripture calls us (Phil. 1:27, 2:2).
Although some Catholics dissent from officially-taught doctrines, the Church’s official teachers—the pope and the bishops united with him—have never changed any doctrine. Over the centuries, as doctrines are examined more fully, the Church comes to understand them more deeply (John 16:12–13), but it never understands them to mean the opposite of what they once meant.
The Church Is Holy (Eph. 5:25–27, Rev. 19:7–8, CCC 823–829)
By his grace Jesus makes the Church holy, just as he is holy. This doesn’t mean that each member is always holy. Jesus said there would be both good and bad members in the Church (John 6:70), and not all the members would go to heaven (Matt. 7:21–23).
But the Church itself is holy because it is the source of holiness and is the guardian of the special means of grace Jesus established, the sacraments (cf. Eph. 5:26).
The Church Is Catholic (Matt. 28:19–20, Rev. 5:9–10, CCC 830–856)
Jesus’ Church is called catholic ("universal" in Greek) because it is his gift to all people. He told his apostles to go throughout the world and make disciples of "all nations" (Matt. 28:19–20).
For 2,000 years the Catholic Church has carried out this mission, preaching the good news that Christ died for all men and that he wants all of us to be members of his universal family (Gal. 3:28).
Nowadays the Catholic Church is found in every country of the world and is still sending out missionaries to "make disciples of all nations" (Matt. 28:19).
The Church Jesus established was known by its most common title, "the Catholic Church," at least as early as the year 107, when Ignatius of Antioch used that title to describe the one Church Jesus founded. The title apparently was old in Ignatius’s time, which means it probably went all the way back to the time of the apostles.
The Church Is Apostolic (Eph. 2:19–20, CCC 857–865)
The Church Jesus founded is apostolic because he appointed the apostles to be the first leaders of the Church, and their successors were to be its future leaders. The apostles were the first bishops, and, since the first century, there has been an unbroken line of Catholic bishops faithfully handing on what the apostles taught the first Christians in Scripture and oral Tradition (2 Tim. 2:2).
These beliefs include the bodily Resurrection of Jesus, the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, the sacrificial nature of the Mass, the forgiveness of sins through a priest, baptismal regeneration, the existence of purgatory, Mary’s special role, and much more —even the doctrine of apostolic succession itself.
Early Christian writings prove the first Christians were thoroughly Catholic in belief and practice and looked to the successors of the apostles as their leaders. What these first Christians believed is still believed by the Catholic Church. No other Church can make that claim.
Pillar of Fire, Pillar of Truth
Man’s ingenuity cannot account for this. The Church has remained one, holy, catholic, and apostolic—not through man’s effort, but because God preserves the Church he established (Matt. 16:18, 28:20).
He guided the Israelites on their escape from Egypt by giving them a pillar of fire to light their way across the dark wilderness (Exod. 13:21). Today he guides us through his Catholic Church.
The Bible, sacred Tradition, and the writings of the earliest Christians testify that the Church teaches with Jesus’ authority. In this age of countless competing religions, each clamoring for attention, one voice rises above the din: the Catholic Church, which the Bible calls "the pillar and foundation of truth" (1 Tim. 3:15).
Jesus assured the apostles and their successors, the popes and the bishops, "He who listens to you listens to me, and he who rejects you rejects me" (Luke 10:16). Jesus promised to guide his Church into all truth (John 16:12–13). We can have confidence that his Church teaches only the truth.
THE STRUCTURE OF THE CHURCH
Jesus chose the apostles to be the earthly leaders of the Church. He gave them his own authority to teach and to govern—not as dictators, but as loving pastors and fathers. That is why Catholics call their spiritual leaders "father." In doing so we follow Paul’s example: "I became your father in Jesus Christ through the gospel" (1 Cor. 4:15).
The apostles, fulfilling Jesus’ will, ordained bishops, priests, and deacons and thus handed on their apostolic ministry to them—the fullest degree of ordination to the bishops, lesser degrees to the priests and deacons.
The Pope and Bishops (CCC 880–883)
Jesus gave Peter special authority among the apostles (John 21:15–17) and signified this by changing his name from Simon to Peter, which means "rock" (John 1:42). He said Peter was to be the rock on which he would build his Church (Matt. 16:18).
In Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke, Simon’s new name was Kepha (which means a massive rock). Later this name was translated into Greek as Petros (John 1:42) and into English as Peter. Christ gave Peter alone the "keys of the kingdom" (Matt. 16:19) and promised that Peter’s decisions would be binding in heaven. He also gave similar power to the other apostles (Matt. 18:18), but only Peter was given the keys, symbols of his authority to rule the Church on earth in Jesus’ absence.
Christ, the Good Shepherd, called Peter to be the chief shepherd of his Church (John 21:15–17). He gave Peter the task of strengthening the other apostles in their faith, ensuring that they taught only what was true (Luke 22:31–32). Peter led the Church in proclaiming the gospel and making decisions (Acts 2:1– 41, 15:7–12).
Early Christian writings tell us that Peter’s successors, the bishops of Rome (who from the earliest times have been called by the affectionate title of "pope," which means "papa"), continued to exercise Peter’s ministry in the Church.
The pope is the successor to Peter as bishop of Rome. The world’s other bishops are successors to the apostles in general.
AN UNBROKEN HISTORY
Jesus said his Church would be "the light of the world." He then noted that "a city set on a hill cannot be hid" (Matt. 5:14). This means his Church is a visible organization. It must have characteristics that clearly identify it and that distinguish it from other churches. Jesus promised, "I will build my Church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it" (Matt. 16:18). This means that his Church will never be destroyed and will never fall away from him. His Church will survive until his return.
Among the Christian churches, only the Catholic Church has existed since the time of Jesus. Every other Christian church is an offshoot of the Catholic Church. The Eastern Orthodox churches broke away from unity with the pope in 1054. The Protestant churches were established during the Reformation, which began in 1517. (Most of today’s Protestant churches are actually offshoots of the original Protestant offshoots.)
Only the Catholic Church existed in the tenth century, in the fifth century, and in the first century, faithfully teaching the doctrines given by Christ to the apostles, omitting nothing. The line of popes can be traced back, in unbroken succession, to Peter himself. This is unequaled by any institution in history.
Even the oldest government is new compared to the papacy, and the churches that send out door-to-door missionaries are young compared to the Catholic Church. Many of these churches began as recently as the nineteenth or twentieth centuries. Some even began during your own lifetime. None of them can claim to be the Church Jesus established.
The Catholic Church has existed for nearly 2,000 years, despite constant opposition from the world. This is testimony to the Church’s divine origin. It must be more than a merely human organization, especially considering that its human members— even some of its leaders—have been unwise, corrupt, or prone to heresy.
Any merely human organization with such members would have collapsed early on. The Catholic Church is today the most vigorous church in the world (and the largest, with a billion members: one sixth of the human race), and that is testimony not to the cleverness of the Church’s leaders, but to the protection of the Holy Spirit.
FOUR MARKS OF THE TRUE CHURCH
If we wish to locate the Church founded by Jesus, we need to locate the one that has the four chief marks or qualities of his Church. The Church we seek must be one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.
The Church Is One (Rom. 12:5, 1 Cor. 10:17, 12:13, CCC 813–822)
Jesus established only one Church, not a collection of differing churches (Lutheran, Baptist, Anglican, and so on). The Bible says the Church is the bride of Christ (Eph. 5:23–32). Jesus can have but one spouse, and his spouse is the Catholic Church.
His Church also teaches just one set of doctrines, which must be the same as those taught by the apostles (Jude 3). This is the unity of belief to which Scripture calls us (Phil. 1:27, 2:2).
Although some Catholics dissent from officially-taught doctrines, the Church’s official teachers—the pope and the bishops united with him—have never changed any doctrine. Over the centuries, as doctrines are examined more fully, the Church comes to understand them more deeply (John 16:12–13), but it never understands them to mean the opposite of what they once meant.
The Church Is Holy (Eph. 5:25–27, Rev. 19:7–8, CCC 823–829)
By his grace Jesus makes the Church holy, just as he is holy. This doesn’t mean that each member is always holy. Jesus said there would be both good and bad members in the Church (John 6:70), and not all the members would go to heaven (Matt. 7:21–23).
But the Church itself is holy because it is the source of holiness and is the guardian of the special means of grace Jesus established, the sacraments (cf. Eph. 5:26).
The Church Is Catholic (Matt. 28:19–20, Rev. 5:9–10, CCC 830–856)
Jesus’ Church is called catholic ("universal" in Greek) because it is his gift to all people. He told his apostles to go throughout the world and make disciples of "all nations" (Matt. 28:19–20).
For 2,000 years the Catholic Church has carried out this mission, preaching the good news that Christ died for all men and that he wants all of us to be members of his universal family (Gal. 3:28).
Nowadays the Catholic Church is found in every country of the world and is still sending out missionaries to "make disciples of all nations" (Matt. 28:19).
The Church Jesus established was known by its most common title, "the Catholic Church," at least as early as the year 107, when Ignatius of Antioch used that title to describe the one Church Jesus founded. The title apparently was old in Ignatius’s time, which means it probably went all the way back to the time of the apostles.
The Church Is Apostolic (Eph. 2:19–20, CCC 857–865)
The Church Jesus founded is apostolic because he appointed the apostles to be the first leaders of the Church, and their successors were to be its future leaders. The apostles were the first bishops, and, since the first century, there has been an unbroken line of Catholic bishops faithfully handing on what the apostles taught the first Christians in Scripture and oral Tradition (2 Tim. 2:2).
These beliefs include the bodily Resurrection of Jesus, the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, the sacrificial nature of the Mass, the forgiveness of sins through a priest, baptismal regeneration, the existence of purgatory, Mary’s special role, and much more —even the doctrine of apostolic succession itself.
Early Christian writings prove the first Christians were thoroughly Catholic in belief and practice and looked to the successors of the apostles as their leaders. What these first Christians believed is still believed by the Catholic Church. No other Church can make that claim.
Pillar of Fire, Pillar of Truth
Man’s ingenuity cannot account for this. The Church has remained one, holy, catholic, and apostolic—not through man’s effort, but because God preserves the Church he established (Matt. 16:18, 28:20).
He guided the Israelites on their escape from Egypt by giving them a pillar of fire to light their way across the dark wilderness (Exod. 13:21). Today he guides us through his Catholic Church.
The Bible, sacred Tradition, and the writings of the earliest Christians testify that the Church teaches with Jesus’ authority. In this age of countless competing religions, each clamoring for attention, one voice rises above the din: the Catholic Church, which the Bible calls "the pillar and foundation of truth" (1 Tim. 3:15).
Jesus assured the apostles and their successors, the popes and the bishops, "He who listens to you listens to me, and he who rejects you rejects me" (Luke 10:16). Jesus promised to guide his Church into all truth (John 16:12–13). We can have confidence that his Church teaches only the truth.
THE STRUCTURE OF THE CHURCH
Jesus chose the apostles to be the earthly leaders of the Church. He gave them his own authority to teach and to govern—not as dictators, but as loving pastors and fathers. That is why Catholics call their spiritual leaders "father." In doing so we follow Paul’s example: "I became your father in Jesus Christ through the gospel" (1 Cor. 4:15).
The apostles, fulfilling Jesus’ will, ordained bishops, priests, and deacons and thus handed on their apostolic ministry to them—the fullest degree of ordination to the bishops, lesser degrees to the priests and deacons.
The Pope and Bishops (CCC 880–883)
Jesus gave Peter special authority among the apostles (John 21:15–17) and signified this by changing his name from Simon to Peter, which means "rock" (John 1:42). He said Peter was to be the rock on which he would build his Church (Matt. 16:18).
In Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke, Simon’s new name was Kepha (which means a massive rock). Later this name was translated into Greek as Petros (John 1:42) and into English as Peter. Christ gave Peter alone the "keys of the kingdom" (Matt. 16:19) and promised that Peter’s decisions would be binding in heaven. He also gave similar power to the other apostles (Matt. 18:18), but only Peter was given the keys, symbols of his authority to rule the Church on earth in Jesus’ absence.
Christ, the Good Shepherd, called Peter to be the chief shepherd of his Church (John 21:15–17). He gave Peter the task of strengthening the other apostles in their faith, ensuring that they taught only what was true (Luke 22:31–32). Peter led the Church in proclaiming the gospel and making decisions (Acts 2:1– 41, 15:7–12).
Early Christian writings tell us that Peter’s successors, the bishops of Rome (who from the earliest times have been called by the affectionate title of "pope," which means "papa"), continued to exercise Peter’s ministry in the Church.
The pope is the successor to Peter as bishop of Rome. The world’s other bishops are successors to the apostles in general.
Monday, September 5, 2011
Bible and the Church: both or neither
Scott Hahn in Rome Sweet Home
I asked [the Harvard protestant theologian] to show me where the Bible taught sola scriptura. I did not hear a single new argument. Instead he posed a question to me. "Scott, if you agree that we now possess the inspired and inerrant Word of God in Scripture, then what more do we need?"
I replied, "Dr. Gerstner, I don't think that the primary issue concerns what we need; but since you ask the question, I'll give you my impression. Ever since the Reformation, over twenty-five thousand different Protestant denominations have come into existence, and experts say there are presently five new ones being formed every week. Every single one of them claims to be following the Holy Spirit and the plain meaning of Scripture. God knows we must need something more.
"I mean, Dr. Gerstner, when our nation's founders gave us the Constitution, they didn't leave it at that. Can you imagine what we'd have today if all they had given us was a document, as good as it is, along with a charge like 'May the spirit of Washington guide each and every citizen'? We'd have anarchy—which is basically what we Protestants do have when it comes to church unity. Instead, our founding fathers gave us something besides the Constitution; they gave us a government—made up of a President, Congress and a Supreme Court—all of which are needed to administer and interpret the Constitution. And if that's just enough to govern a country like ours, what would it take to govern a worldwide Church?
"That's why, personally, Dr. Gerstner, I'm beginning to think that Christ didn't leave us with just a book and his Spirit. In fact, he never mentions a thing about writing to his apostles anywhere in the Gospels; besides, fewer than half of them even wrote books that were included in the New Testament. What Christ did say—to Peter—was, 'Upon this rock, I will build my Church . . . , and the gates of hades will not prevail against it.' So it makes more sense to me that Jesus left us with his Church—made up of a Pope, bishops and councils—all of which are needed to administer and interpret Scripture."
THE PRIMARY ISSUE
Dr. Gerstner gave a thoughtful pause. "That's all very interesting, Scott, but you said that you didn't think it was the primary issue? What, then, is the primary issue for you?"
"Dr. Gerstner, I think the primary issue is what the Scripture teaches about the Word of God, for nowhere does it reduce God's Word down to Scripture alone.
Instead, the Bible tells us in many places that God's authoritative Word is to be found in the Church: her Tradition (2 Th 2:15; 3:6) as well as her preaching and teaching (1 Pet 1:25; 2 Pet 1:20-21; Mt 18:17). That's why I think the Bible supports the Catholic principle of sola verbum Dei, 'the Word of God alone', rather than the Protestant slogan, sola scriptura, 'Scripture alone'."
Dr. Gerstner responded by asserting—over and over again—that Catholic Tradition, the Popes and ecumenical councils all taught contrary to Scripture.
"Contrary to whose interpretation of Scripture?" I asked. "Besides, Church historians all agree that we got the New Testament from the Council of Hippo in 393 and the Council of Carthage in 397, both of which sent off their judgments to Rome for the Pope's approval. From 30 to 393 is a long time to be without a New Testament, isn't it? Besides, there were many other books that people back then thought might be inspired, such as the Epistle of Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas and the Acts of Paul. There were also several New Testament books, such as Second Peter, Jude and Revelation, that some thought should be excluded. So whose decision was trustworthy and final, if the Church doesn't teach with infallible authority?"
Dr. Gerstner calmly replied, "Popes, bishops and councils can and do make mistakes. Scott, how is it you can think that God renders Peter infallible?"
I paused for a moment. "Well, Dr. Gerstner, Protestants and Catholics agree that God most certainly rendered Peter infallible on at least a couple of occasions, when he wrote First and Second Peter, for instance. So if God could render him infallible when teaching authoritatively in print, then why couldn't he prevent him from errors when teaching authoritatively in person? Likewise, if God could do it with Peter—and the other apostles who wrote Scripture—then why couldn't he do it with their successors as well, especially since he could foresee the anarchy that would come if he didn't? Besides, Dr. Gerstner, how can we be sure about the twenty-seven books of the New Testament themselves being the infallible Word of God, since fallible Church councils and Popes are the ones who made up the list?"
I will never forget his response.
"Scott, that simply means that all we can have is a fallible collection of infallible documents!"
I asked, "Is that really the best that historic Protestant Christianity can do?"
"Yes, Scott, all we can do is make probable judgments from historical evidence. We have no infallible authority but Scripture."
"But, Dr. Gerstner, how can I be certain that it's really God's infallible Word that I am reading when I open up Matthew, or Romans, or Galatians?"
"Like I said, Scott, all we have is a fallible collection of infallible documents."
Once again, I felt very unsatisfied with his answers, though I knew he was representing the Protestant position faithfully. I sat there pondering what he had said about this, the ultimate issue of authority, and the logical inconsistency of the Protestant position.
All I said in response was, "Then it occurs to me, Dr. Gerstner, that when it comes right down to it, it must be the Bible and the Church—both or neither!"
I asked [the Harvard protestant theologian] to show me where the Bible taught sola scriptura. I did not hear a single new argument. Instead he posed a question to me. "Scott, if you agree that we now possess the inspired and inerrant Word of God in Scripture, then what more do we need?"
I replied, "Dr. Gerstner, I don't think that the primary issue concerns what we need; but since you ask the question, I'll give you my impression. Ever since the Reformation, over twenty-five thousand different Protestant denominations have come into existence, and experts say there are presently five new ones being formed every week. Every single one of them claims to be following the Holy Spirit and the plain meaning of Scripture. God knows we must need something more.
"I mean, Dr. Gerstner, when our nation's founders gave us the Constitution, they didn't leave it at that. Can you imagine what we'd have today if all they had given us was a document, as good as it is, along with a charge like 'May the spirit of Washington guide each and every citizen'? We'd have anarchy—which is basically what we Protestants do have when it comes to church unity. Instead, our founding fathers gave us something besides the Constitution; they gave us a government—made up of a President, Congress and a Supreme Court—all of which are needed to administer and interpret the Constitution. And if that's just enough to govern a country like ours, what would it take to govern a worldwide Church?
"That's why, personally, Dr. Gerstner, I'm beginning to think that Christ didn't leave us with just a book and his Spirit. In fact, he never mentions a thing about writing to his apostles anywhere in the Gospels; besides, fewer than half of them even wrote books that were included in the New Testament. What Christ did say—to Peter—was, 'Upon this rock, I will build my Church . . . , and the gates of hades will not prevail against it.' So it makes more sense to me that Jesus left us with his Church—made up of a Pope, bishops and councils—all of which are needed to administer and interpret Scripture."
THE PRIMARY ISSUE
Dr. Gerstner gave a thoughtful pause. "That's all very interesting, Scott, but you said that you didn't think it was the primary issue? What, then, is the primary issue for you?"
"Dr. Gerstner, I think the primary issue is what the Scripture teaches about the Word of God, for nowhere does it reduce God's Word down to Scripture alone.
Instead, the Bible tells us in many places that God's authoritative Word is to be found in the Church: her Tradition (2 Th 2:15; 3:6) as well as her preaching and teaching (1 Pet 1:25; 2 Pet 1:20-21; Mt 18:17). That's why I think the Bible supports the Catholic principle of sola verbum Dei, 'the Word of God alone', rather than the Protestant slogan, sola scriptura, 'Scripture alone'."
Dr. Gerstner responded by asserting—over and over again—that Catholic Tradition, the Popes and ecumenical councils all taught contrary to Scripture.
"Contrary to whose interpretation of Scripture?" I asked. "Besides, Church historians all agree that we got the New Testament from the Council of Hippo in 393 and the Council of Carthage in 397, both of which sent off their judgments to Rome for the Pope's approval. From 30 to 393 is a long time to be without a New Testament, isn't it? Besides, there were many other books that people back then thought might be inspired, such as the Epistle of Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas and the Acts of Paul. There were also several New Testament books, such as Second Peter, Jude and Revelation, that some thought should be excluded. So whose decision was trustworthy and final, if the Church doesn't teach with infallible authority?"
Dr. Gerstner calmly replied, "Popes, bishops and councils can and do make mistakes. Scott, how is it you can think that God renders Peter infallible?"
I paused for a moment. "Well, Dr. Gerstner, Protestants and Catholics agree that God most certainly rendered Peter infallible on at least a couple of occasions, when he wrote First and Second Peter, for instance. So if God could render him infallible when teaching authoritatively in print, then why couldn't he prevent him from errors when teaching authoritatively in person? Likewise, if God could do it with Peter—and the other apostles who wrote Scripture—then why couldn't he do it with their successors as well, especially since he could foresee the anarchy that would come if he didn't? Besides, Dr. Gerstner, how can we be sure about the twenty-seven books of the New Testament themselves being the infallible Word of God, since fallible Church councils and Popes are the ones who made up the list?"
I will never forget his response.
"Scott, that simply means that all we can have is a fallible collection of infallible documents!"
I asked, "Is that really the best that historic Protestant Christianity can do?"
"Yes, Scott, all we can do is make probable judgments from historical evidence. We have no infallible authority but Scripture."
"But, Dr. Gerstner, how can I be certain that it's really God's infallible Word that I am reading when I open up Matthew, or Romans, or Galatians?"
"Like I said, Scott, all we have is a fallible collection of infallible documents."
Once again, I felt very unsatisfied with his answers, though I knew he was representing the Protestant position faithfully. I sat there pondering what he had said about this, the ultimate issue of authority, and the logical inconsistency of the Protestant position.
All I said in response was, "Then it occurs to me, Dr. Gerstner, that when it comes right down to it, it must be the Bible and the Church—both or neither!"
New Covenant establishes worldwide family in Christ
Scott Hahn
What I discovered was that the New Covenant established a new worldwide family in which Christ shared his own divine sonship, making us children of God. As a covenant act, being justified meant sharing in the grace of Christ as God's sons and daughters; being sanctified meant sharing in the life and power of the Holy Spirit. In this light, God's grace became something much more than divine favor; it was the actual gift of God's life in divine sonship.
Luther and Calvin explained this exclusively in terms of courtroom language. But I was beginning to see that, far more than simply being a judge, God was our Father. Far more than simply being criminals, we were runaways. Far more than the New Covenant being made in a courtroom, it was fashioned by God in a family room.
Saint Paul (whom I had thought of as the first Luther) taught in Romans, Galatians and elsewhere that justification was more than a legal decree; it established us in Christ as God's children by grace alone. In fact, I discovered that nowhere did Saint Paul ever teach that we were justified by faith alone! Sola fide was unscriptural!
I remembered how one of my favorite theologians, Dr. Gerstner, once said in class that if Protestants were wrong on sola fide—and the Catholic Church was right that justification is by faith and works—"I'd be on my knees tomorrow morning outside of the Vatican doing penance." We all knew, of course, that he said that for rhetorical effect, but it made a real impact. In fact, the whole Reformation flowed from this one difference.
Luther and Calvin often said that this was the article on which the Church stood or fell. That was why, for them, the Catholic Church fell and Protestantism rose up from the ashes. Sola fide was the material principle of the Reformation, and I was coming to the conviction that Saint Paul never taught it.
In James 2:24, the Bible teaches that "a man is justified by works and not by faith alone." Besides, Saint Paul said in I Corinthians 13:2, ". . . if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing."
This was a traumatic transformation for me to say that on this point I now thought Luther was fundamentally wrong. For seven years, Luther had been my main source of inspiration and powerful proclamation of the Word. And this doctrine had been the rationale behind the whole Protestant Reformation.
What I discovered was that the New Covenant established a new worldwide family in which Christ shared his own divine sonship, making us children of God. As a covenant act, being justified meant sharing in the grace of Christ as God's sons and daughters; being sanctified meant sharing in the life and power of the Holy Spirit. In this light, God's grace became something much more than divine favor; it was the actual gift of God's life in divine sonship.
Luther and Calvin explained this exclusively in terms of courtroom language. But I was beginning to see that, far more than simply being a judge, God was our Father. Far more than simply being criminals, we were runaways. Far more than the New Covenant being made in a courtroom, it was fashioned by God in a family room.
Saint Paul (whom I had thought of as the first Luther) taught in Romans, Galatians and elsewhere that justification was more than a legal decree; it established us in Christ as God's children by grace alone. In fact, I discovered that nowhere did Saint Paul ever teach that we were justified by faith alone! Sola fide was unscriptural!
I remembered how one of my favorite theologians, Dr. Gerstner, once said in class that if Protestants were wrong on sola fide—and the Catholic Church was right that justification is by faith and works—"I'd be on my knees tomorrow morning outside of the Vatican doing penance." We all knew, of course, that he said that for rhetorical effect, but it made a real impact. In fact, the whole Reformation flowed from this one difference.
Luther and Calvin often said that this was the article on which the Church stood or fell. That was why, for them, the Catholic Church fell and Protestantism rose up from the ashes. Sola fide was the material principle of the Reformation, and I was coming to the conviction that Saint Paul never taught it.
In James 2:24, the Bible teaches that "a man is justified by works and not by faith alone." Besides, Saint Paul said in I Corinthians 13:2, ". . . if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing."
This was a traumatic transformation for me to say that on this point I now thought Luther was fundamentally wrong. For seven years, Luther had been my main source of inspiration and powerful proclamation of the Word. And this doctrine had been the rationale behind the whole Protestant Reformation.
Sola scriptura is self-refuting. It is sola ego
By Bob Sungenis
Every doctrine one believes is based on the authority one accepts. I decided to test the pet theory of [sola scriptura] by asking numerous Protestant scholars and pastors to help me find sola scriptura in the Bible. By this point, I wasn't too surprised to find that none was able to provide a convincing answer.
They pointed to verses that spoke of the veracity and inerrancy of the Bible, but could show none that explicitly taught that Scripture is our sole, formally sufficient authority. Interestingly, some of these Protestants were candid enough to admit that the Bible nowhere taught sola scriptura , but they compensated for this curious lacuna by saying the Bible doesn't have to teach sola scriptura in order for the doctrine to be true. But I could see that this position was utterly untenable. For if sola scriptura—the idea that the Bible is formally sufficient for Christians—is not taught in the Bible, sola scriptura is a false and self-refuting proposition.
As I studied Scripture in the light of the Catholic materials I had been sent, I began to see that the Bible in fact points to the Church as being the final arbiter of truth in all spiritual matters (cf. 1 Timothy 3:15; Matthew 16:18-19; 18:18; Luke 10:16).
This made sense, especially on a practical level. Since only an entity with the ability to observe and correctly interpret information can act as an authority, I saw that the Bible, though it contains God-breathed revelation, cannot act as a final "authority" since it is dependent on thinking personalities to observe what it says and, more importantly, interpret what it means. I also saw that the Bible warns us that it contains difficult and confusing information which is capable of (if not prone to) being twisted into all sorts of fanciful and false interpretations (2 Peter 3:16).
During my years of wandering through the theological wilderness of Protestantism, I always knew that something was wrong with it, but I just couldn't put my finger on it. Now I was beginning to put the pieces of the puzzle together. The more I thought about it the more I began to see that the theory of sola scriptura had done untold damage to Christendom. The most obvious evidence of this damage was Protestanism itself: a huge mass of conflicting, bickering denominations, causing, by its very nature of "protest" and "defiance," an endless ; proliferation of chaos and controversy.
My seventeen-year experience with Protestant biblical scholars had made one thing very clear to me: Sola scriptura is a euphemism for "sola ego."
What I mean is that every Protestant has his own interpretation of what Scripture says and, of course, he believes that his interpretation is superior to everyone else's. Each advances his own view, assuming (if not actually claiming) that the Holy Spirit has personally led him to that interpretation.
As a Protestant I greatly admired Martin Luther and John Calvin for their boldness to interpret the Bible for themselves. Now I was faced with the probability that these heroes of mine were very intelligent but also very prideful and rebellious men. After I had read a few scholarly biographies of these two reformers I realized that much about their personal lives was never told to us in seminary. These insights caused me to take an even more skeptical look at the Reformers and the Reformation as a whole. I realize that there are problems within the Catholic Church. In every age, the Church has had to endure the blight of worldly, sinful, and heretical members.
Every doctrine one believes is based on the authority one accepts. I decided to test the pet theory of [sola scriptura] by asking numerous Protestant scholars and pastors to help me find sola scriptura in the Bible. By this point, I wasn't too surprised to find that none was able to provide a convincing answer.
They pointed to verses that spoke of the veracity and inerrancy of the Bible, but could show none that explicitly taught that Scripture is our sole, formally sufficient authority. Interestingly, some of these Protestants were candid enough to admit that the Bible nowhere taught sola scriptura , but they compensated for this curious lacuna by saying the Bible doesn't have to teach sola scriptura in order for the doctrine to be true. But I could see that this position was utterly untenable. For if sola scriptura—the idea that the Bible is formally sufficient for Christians—is not taught in the Bible, sola scriptura is a false and self-refuting proposition.
As I studied Scripture in the light of the Catholic materials I had been sent, I began to see that the Bible in fact points to the Church as being the final arbiter of truth in all spiritual matters (cf. 1 Timothy 3:15; Matthew 16:18-19; 18:18; Luke 10:16).
This made sense, especially on a practical level. Since only an entity with the ability to observe and correctly interpret information can act as an authority, I saw that the Bible, though it contains God-breathed revelation, cannot act as a final "authority" since it is dependent on thinking personalities to observe what it says and, more importantly, interpret what it means. I also saw that the Bible warns us that it contains difficult and confusing information which is capable of (if not prone to) being twisted into all sorts of fanciful and false interpretations (2 Peter 3:16).
During my years of wandering through the theological wilderness of Protestantism, I always knew that something was wrong with it, but I just couldn't put my finger on it. Now I was beginning to put the pieces of the puzzle together. The more I thought about it the more I began to see that the theory of sola scriptura had done untold damage to Christendom. The most obvious evidence of this damage was Protestanism itself: a huge mass of conflicting, bickering denominations, causing, by its very nature of "protest" and "defiance," an endless ; proliferation of chaos and controversy.
My seventeen-year experience with Protestant biblical scholars had made one thing very clear to me: Sola scriptura is a euphemism for "sola ego."
What I mean is that every Protestant has his own interpretation of what Scripture says and, of course, he believes that his interpretation is superior to everyone else's. Each advances his own view, assuming (if not actually claiming) that the Holy Spirit has personally led him to that interpretation.
As a Protestant I greatly admired Martin Luther and John Calvin for their boldness to interpret the Bible for themselves. Now I was faced with the probability that these heroes of mine were very intelligent but also very prideful and rebellious men. After I had read a few scholarly biographies of these two reformers I realized that much about their personal lives was never told to us in seminary. These insights caused me to take an even more skeptical look at the Reformers and the Reformation as a whole. I realize that there are problems within the Catholic Church. In every age, the Church has had to endure the blight of worldly, sinful, and heretical members.
Eat my flesh
By T.L Frazier
I see that the first Christians "devoted themselves to the teaching of the Apostles and to the communal life,, to the breaking of the bread and to the prayers'- (Acts 2:42)."Obviously, "the breaking of the bread and to the prayers" (Greek: taiklasei ton artou kai tais proseuchais) was something other than the traditional Baptist after-church potluck hosted by the Ladies Auxiliary. This verse, along with Acts 20:7, says that the Lord's Supper, or Eucharist in Greek (literally "to give thanks," as in John 6:23), was a central part of Christian Sunday worship described in the New Testament. "Why wasn't it a part of ours?" I wondered. This thought really plagued me.
One afternoon I was reading the Gospel of John when something Jesus said caught my attention for the first time. It contained graphic eucharistic language: "I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate manna in the desert, but they died; this is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever,- and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world....
"Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats [Greek: trogon] my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats [trogon] my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds [trogon] on me will have life because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats [trogon] this bread will live forever" (Jn. 6:48-_£8).
The normal Greek verb meaning "to eat" used throughout this passage, phagon, is suddenly replaced by literally to crunch or gnaw. The real, corporal function of eating is obviously being stressed. Also, the tense of the verb trogon implies a continuous consumption of the body and blood of Christ.
So as death was introduced by eating the forbidden-fruit, now life is restored by eating the "bread of life," that is Christ's flesh. I knew the Catholic Church taught that the bread and the wine used in celebrating the Last Supper became the real body and blood of Christ. Professional anti-Catholic Jack Chick had disclosed as much to me in his coming books in which he lampoons the Eucharist as the "Cookie Christ." While it's easy to ridicule the Eucharist, I saw that this passage in John was best understood in light of the ancient Catholic belief.
1 Corinthians 5:7-8 came to mind where Paul says, "For indeed Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us. Therefore let us keep the feast." As the Lord's Supper is the only "feast" Christians celebrated, this implied a regular celebration of the Eucharist as the New Testament Passover, the Passover being a ceremonial meal the Israelites had to eat in order to be saved from "the destroyer" which killed the first-born among the Egyptians (Ex. 12:1-42).
Recalling that in Acts 2:42; 20:7 and 1 Corinthians 11:20-21, the Christians used to celebrate the "breaking of the bread and the prayers" whenever they met, I became even more uneasy. Could Catholics possibly be right? Could the Eucharist be the normative Christian worship where, as Jesus said, "whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life," saving us from the "destroyer?"
I found the import of1 Corinthians 11:27-32, that those who fail to discern "the body and blood of the Lord" in the Eucharist would eat and drink condemnation upon themselves, refuted the Baptist dogma that the actual body and blood of the Lord were not to be discerned in the Eucharist. In fact, if the Eucharist were merely a "symbol" lacking efficacy, Paul's stern warning to the Corinthians concerning its improper observance seemed incomprehensible: "That is why many among you are ill \ and infirm, and a considerable number are dying." What other Christian "symbol" ever carried the death sentence for its ill treatment?
Moreover 1 Corinthians 10:16-17 says that our communion, or fellowship (Greek: koinonia}, in the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist is the basis for the Church's own koinonia—each member of the Body of Christ being at one with each other (cf. Rom. 12:4-5 and 1 Cor. 12:12-26). Certainly our fellowship with the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist couldn't be less real than our fellowship with one another, especially, as St. Paul says in this passage, if the Eucharist is the very basis for the Church's fellowship.
If the Church as the Body of Christ isn't merely a symbolic koinonia, then the Eucharist as the Body of Christ couldn't be merely a symbolic koinonia either.
To uphold the Fundamentalist position, one must maintain that the Church itself is only symbolic like the Eucharist. But could a merely symbolic Church be the salt of the earth and the light of the world (Matt. 5:13-16)? The thought was absurd.
I see that the first Christians "devoted themselves to the teaching of the Apostles and to the communal life,, to the breaking of the bread and to the prayers'- (Acts 2:42)."Obviously, "the breaking of the bread and to the prayers" (Greek: taiklasei ton artou kai tais proseuchais) was something other than the traditional Baptist after-church potluck hosted by the Ladies Auxiliary. This verse, along with Acts 20:7, says that the Lord's Supper, or Eucharist in Greek (literally "to give thanks," as in John 6:23), was a central part of Christian Sunday worship described in the New Testament. "Why wasn't it a part of ours?" I wondered. This thought really plagued me.
One afternoon I was reading the Gospel of John when something Jesus said caught my attention for the first time. It contained graphic eucharistic language: "I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate manna in the desert, but they died; this is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever,- and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world....
"Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats [Greek: trogon] my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats [trogon] my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds [trogon] on me will have life because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats [trogon] this bread will live forever" (Jn. 6:48-_£8).
The normal Greek verb meaning "to eat" used throughout this passage, phagon, is suddenly replaced by literally to crunch or gnaw. The real, corporal function of eating is obviously being stressed. Also, the tense of the verb trogon implies a continuous consumption of the body and blood of Christ.
So as death was introduced by eating the forbidden-fruit, now life is restored by eating the "bread of life," that is Christ's flesh. I knew the Catholic Church taught that the bread and the wine used in celebrating the Last Supper became the real body and blood of Christ. Professional anti-Catholic Jack Chick had disclosed as much to me in his coming books in which he lampoons the Eucharist as the "Cookie Christ." While it's easy to ridicule the Eucharist, I saw that this passage in John was best understood in light of the ancient Catholic belief.
1 Corinthians 5:7-8 came to mind where Paul says, "For indeed Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us. Therefore let us keep the feast." As the Lord's Supper is the only "feast" Christians celebrated, this implied a regular celebration of the Eucharist as the New Testament Passover, the Passover being a ceremonial meal the Israelites had to eat in order to be saved from "the destroyer" which killed the first-born among the Egyptians (Ex. 12:1-42).
Recalling that in Acts 2:42; 20:7 and 1 Corinthians 11:20-21, the Christians used to celebrate the "breaking of the bread and the prayers" whenever they met, I became even more uneasy. Could Catholics possibly be right? Could the Eucharist be the normative Christian worship where, as Jesus said, "whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life," saving us from the "destroyer?"
I found the import of1 Corinthians 11:27-32, that those who fail to discern "the body and blood of the Lord" in the Eucharist would eat and drink condemnation upon themselves, refuted the Baptist dogma that the actual body and blood of the Lord were not to be discerned in the Eucharist. In fact, if the Eucharist were merely a "symbol" lacking efficacy, Paul's stern warning to the Corinthians concerning its improper observance seemed incomprehensible: "That is why many among you are ill \ and infirm, and a considerable number are dying." What other Christian "symbol" ever carried the death sentence for its ill treatment?
Moreover 1 Corinthians 10:16-17 says that our communion, or fellowship (Greek: koinonia}, in the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist is the basis for the Church's own koinonia—each member of the Body of Christ being at one with each other (cf. Rom. 12:4-5 and 1 Cor. 12:12-26). Certainly our fellowship with the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist couldn't be less real than our fellowship with one another, especially, as St. Paul says in this passage, if the Eucharist is the very basis for the Church's fellowship.
If the Church as the Body of Christ isn't merely a symbolic koinonia, then the Eucharist as the Body of Christ couldn't be merely a symbolic koinonia either.
To uphold the Fundamentalist position, one must maintain that the Church itself is only symbolic like the Eucharist. But could a merely symbolic Church be the salt of the earth and the light of the world (Matt. 5:13-16)? The thought was absurd.
Early Church same as Catholic Church
By Bob Sungenis in From Controversy to Consolation
Many Protestants claim that the Church of the first three centuries was a "pure" church, and only after the legalization of the Christian faith by the Roman emperor Constantine (in A.D. 312) did the church become "Catholic" and corrupt. But upon studying this issue I found that the doctrines of post-Constantine Catholicism are the same doctrines, some in more primitive form, that were held by Christians for the preceding three centuries.
My study of the writings of the Church Fathers revealed that the early Church believed in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, confession of sins to a priest, baptismal regeneration, salvation by faith and good works done through grace, that one could reject God's grace and forfeit salvation, that the bishop of Rome is the head of the Church, that Mary is the Mother of God and was perpetually a virgin, that intercessory prayer can be made to the saints in heaven, that purgatory is a state of temporary purification which some Christians undergo before entering heaven. Except for the perpetual virginity and divine motherhood of Mary, all of these doctrines were repudiated by the Protestant Reformers.
If the Catholic Church is in error to hold these beliefs, then it was in error long before Constantine legalized Christianity. This would mean that the Church apostatized before the end of the first century, when the apostles were still alive! An absurd theory which even the most anti-Catholic of Protestants can't quite bring themselves to accept.
What I discovered by reading the Church Fathers was that present-day Catholic interpretations of Scripture were held by the earliest Christians. They were passed down by Sacred Tradition and preserved and disseminated just as carefully as the Scripture was preserved and copied. Verses I had read hundreds of times concerning "tradition" now took on a whole new meaning. I finally understood the value and necessity of Sacred Tradition. Tradition did not contradict the Bible, rather, it supported it and made it clearer.
The most important of these verses was 2 Thessalonians 2:15 where Paul specified that oral tradition was to be preserved and obeyed the same as the written tradition. Because of my inherited Protestant aversion to "tradition" (in Matt. 15:3-9, Mark 7:1-15, and Col. 2:22 traditions of men are condemned), I had never really appreciated the value of good and wholesome traditions, especially those Sacred Traditions that were given by God and are preserved by the infallible guidance of the Holy Spirit in the Church. I also learned that in places where the Scripture was ambiguous (e.g., infant baptism), Sacred Tradition helped us to understand the intent of the apostles.
Many Protestants claim that the Church of the first three centuries was a "pure" church, and only after the legalization of the Christian faith by the Roman emperor Constantine (in A.D. 312) did the church become "Catholic" and corrupt. But upon studying this issue I found that the doctrines of post-Constantine Catholicism are the same doctrines, some in more primitive form, that were held by Christians for the preceding three centuries.
My study of the writings of the Church Fathers revealed that the early Church believed in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, confession of sins to a priest, baptismal regeneration, salvation by faith and good works done through grace, that one could reject God's grace and forfeit salvation, that the bishop of Rome is the head of the Church, that Mary is the Mother of God and was perpetually a virgin, that intercessory prayer can be made to the saints in heaven, that purgatory is a state of temporary purification which some Christians undergo before entering heaven. Except for the perpetual virginity and divine motherhood of Mary, all of these doctrines were repudiated by the Protestant Reformers.
If the Catholic Church is in error to hold these beliefs, then it was in error long before Constantine legalized Christianity. This would mean that the Church apostatized before the end of the first century, when the apostles were still alive! An absurd theory which even the most anti-Catholic of Protestants can't quite bring themselves to accept.
What I discovered by reading the Church Fathers was that present-day Catholic interpretations of Scripture were held by the earliest Christians. They were passed down by Sacred Tradition and preserved and disseminated just as carefully as the Scripture was preserved and copied. Verses I had read hundreds of times concerning "tradition" now took on a whole new meaning. I finally understood the value and necessity of Sacred Tradition. Tradition did not contradict the Bible, rather, it supported it and made it clearer.
The most important of these verses was 2 Thessalonians 2:15 where Paul specified that oral tradition was to be preserved and obeyed the same as the written tradition. Because of my inherited Protestant aversion to "tradition" (in Matt. 15:3-9, Mark 7:1-15, and Col. 2:22 traditions of men are condemned), I had never really appreciated the value of good and wholesome traditions, especially those Sacred Traditions that were given by God and are preserved by the infallible guidance of the Holy Spirit in the Church. I also learned that in places where the Scripture was ambiguous (e.g., infant baptism), Sacred Tradition helped us to understand the intent of the apostles.
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Christ promised to guide his Church to all truth
Marcus Grodi in What is Truth?
As Protestants we had become infatuated by our freedom, placing personal opinion over the teaching authority of the Church. We believed that the guidance of the Holy Spirit is enough to lead any sincere seeker to the true meaning of Scripture.
The Catholic response to this view is that it is the mission of the Church to teach with infallible certitude. Christ promised the apostles and their successors, “He who listens to you listens to me. And he who rejects you rejects me and rejects the one who sent me” (Luke 10:16). The early Church believed this too. A very compelling passage leaped out at me one day while I was studying Church history:
The Apostles received the gospel for us from the Lord Jesus Christ; and Jesus Christ was sent from God. Christ, therefore, is from God, and the Apostles are from Christ. Both of these orderly arrangements, then, are by God’s will. Receiving their instructions and being full of confidence on the account of the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and confirmed in faith by the Word of God, they went forth in the complete assurance of the Holy Spirit, preaching the Good News that the kingdom of God is coming. Through countryside and city they preached; and they appointed their earliest converts, testing them by the Spirit, to be the bishops and deacons of future believers. Nor was this a novelty: for bishops and deacons had been written about a long time earlier. Indeed, Scripture somewhere says: “I will set up their bishops in righteousness and their deacons in faith (Clement of Rome, Epistle to the Corinthians 42:1-5 [ca. A.D. 80]).
Another patristic quote that helped breach the wall of my Protestant presuppositions was this one from Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons:
When, therefore, we have such proofs, it is not necessary to seek among others the truth which is easily obtained from the Church. For the apostles, like a rich man in a bank, deposited with her most copiously everything that pertains to the truth; and everyone whosoever wishes draws from her the drink of life. For she is the entrance to life, while all the rest are thieves and robbers. That is why it is surely necessary to avoid them, while cherishing with the utmost diligence the things pertaining to the Church, and to lay hold of the tradition of truth. What then? If there should be a dispute over some kind of question, ought we not have recourse to the most ancient churches in which the apostles were familiar, and draw from them what is clear and certain in regard to that question? What if the apostles had not in fact left writings for us? Would it not be necessary to follow the order of tradition, which was handed down to those to whom they entrusted the Churches? (Against Heresies 3,4,1 [ca. A.D. 180]).
I studied the causes for the Reformation. The Roman Catholic Church of that day was desperately in need of renewal but Martin Luther and the other Reformers chose the wrong, the unbiblical, method for dealing with the problems they saw in the Church. The correct route was and still is just what my Presbyterian friend had told me: Don’t leave the Church; don’t break the unity of faith. Work for genuine reform based on God’s plan, not man’s, achieving it through prayer, penance, and good example.
I could no longer remain Protestant. To do so meant I must deny Christ’s promise to guide and protect his Church and to send the Holy Spirit to lead it into all truth (cf. Matt. 16:18-19, 18:18, 28:20; John 14:16, 25, 16:13).
As Protestants we had become infatuated by our freedom, placing personal opinion over the teaching authority of the Church. We believed that the guidance of the Holy Spirit is enough to lead any sincere seeker to the true meaning of Scripture.
The Catholic response to this view is that it is the mission of the Church to teach with infallible certitude. Christ promised the apostles and their successors, “He who listens to you listens to me. And he who rejects you rejects me and rejects the one who sent me” (Luke 10:16). The early Church believed this too. A very compelling passage leaped out at me one day while I was studying Church history:
The Apostles received the gospel for us from the Lord Jesus Christ; and Jesus Christ was sent from God. Christ, therefore, is from God, and the Apostles are from Christ. Both of these orderly arrangements, then, are by God’s will. Receiving their instructions and being full of confidence on the account of the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and confirmed in faith by the Word of God, they went forth in the complete assurance of the Holy Spirit, preaching the Good News that the kingdom of God is coming. Through countryside and city they preached; and they appointed their earliest converts, testing them by the Spirit, to be the bishops and deacons of future believers. Nor was this a novelty: for bishops and deacons had been written about a long time earlier. Indeed, Scripture somewhere says: “I will set up their bishops in righteousness and their deacons in faith (Clement of Rome, Epistle to the Corinthians 42:1-5 [ca. A.D. 80]).
Another patristic quote that helped breach the wall of my Protestant presuppositions was this one from Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons:
When, therefore, we have such proofs, it is not necessary to seek among others the truth which is easily obtained from the Church. For the apostles, like a rich man in a bank, deposited with her most copiously everything that pertains to the truth; and everyone whosoever wishes draws from her the drink of life. For she is the entrance to life, while all the rest are thieves and robbers. That is why it is surely necessary to avoid them, while cherishing with the utmost diligence the things pertaining to the Church, and to lay hold of the tradition of truth. What then? If there should be a dispute over some kind of question, ought we not have recourse to the most ancient churches in which the apostles were familiar, and draw from them what is clear and certain in regard to that question? What if the apostles had not in fact left writings for us? Would it not be necessary to follow the order of tradition, which was handed down to those to whom they entrusted the Churches? (Against Heresies 3,4,1 [ca. A.D. 180]).
I studied the causes for the Reformation. The Roman Catholic Church of that day was desperately in need of renewal but Martin Luther and the other Reformers chose the wrong, the unbiblical, method for dealing with the problems they saw in the Church. The correct route was and still is just what my Presbyterian friend had told me: Don’t leave the Church; don’t break the unity of faith. Work for genuine reform based on God’s plan, not man’s, achieving it through prayer, penance, and good example.
I could no longer remain Protestant. To do so meant I must deny Christ’s promise to guide and protect his Church and to send the Holy Spirit to lead it into all truth (cf. Matt. 16:18-19, 18:18, 28:20; John 14:16, 25, 16:13).
Saturday, September 3, 2011
Early Church Fathers
The Early Church Fathers
by Sebastian R. Fama
The earliest of the fathers are known as the Apostolic Fathers. Their writings come to us from the first two centuries of Church History. They were the immediate successors of the Apostles. Three of them were disciples of one or more of the Apostles. Clement of Rome was a disciple of the apostles Peter and Paul. Ignatius of Antioch and Polycarp of Smyrna were disciples of the Apostle John. Naturally we would expect that those who were taught directly by the Apostles would themselves believe and teach correctly.
Protestantism is based on the allegation that the Catholic Church became corrupt shortly after 312 AD. That’s when the emperor Constantine converted and made Christianity the state religion. It is alleged that pagan converts came into the Church bringing with them many of their pagan beliefs and practices. According to Protestant historians the pagan practices that were brought into the Church became the distinctive doctrines of Catholicism. Thus the Catholic Church was born and true Christianity was lost until the Reformation. But history tells us a different story.
Shortly after the death of the apostle John, his disciple, Ignatius of Antioch, referred to the Church as the Catholic Church. In his Letter to the Smyrnaeans he wrote: "Where the bishop is present, there is the Catholic Church" (8:2 [A.D. 107]).
In reading the Early Fathers we see a Church with bishops in authority over priests and deacons. We see a church that baptized infants and believed in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. We see a Church that believed in the primacy of Rome, the intercession of the saints in heaven and the Immaculate Conception of Mary. Thus we are lead to the inescapable conclusion that the early Church was the Catholic Church.
As you can see, the writings of the Early Fathers are especially helpful in refuting the Protestant claim that many Catholic doctrines were invented in later years. Although they are wrong concerning the age of Catholic doctrines their reasoning is sound. If a teaching appears after the apostolic age without evidence of previous support it must be false. Curiously enough though, they abandon this line of reasoning when it comes to many of their own beliefs such as the doctrine of Scripture Alone (mid 1500’s), The Rapture (late 1800’s), the licitness of artificial contraception (1930) and many others.
It is important to note that some doctrines existed in a primitive form during the early years. These doctrines would develop over time. One example is the Doctrine of the Trinity. All of its elements were present at the beginning but it wasn’t clearly defined the way it is today. It wasn’t until later that it was fully understood. This would not make it a late teaching as all of the information was there from the beginning. Other doctrines were developed in this same way.
Also worthy of note is the fact that the Early Fathers occasionally disagreed on minor issues that were not yet settled by the Church. This does not present us with a problem as we do not claim that the Fathers were infallible. While they were not infallible they were unmistakably Catholic. They clearly illustrate the fact that the early Church had no resemblance to Protestantism.
John Henry Newman was one of the more famous converts to Catholicism. After studying the Early Fathers he wrote: "The Christianity of history is not Protestantism. If ever there were a safe truth it is this, and Protestantism has ever felt it so; to be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant" (An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine).
Christianity was started by Christ 2000 years ago and it has existed for 2000 years. It didn’t go away for 1200 years and come back. Indeed that would have rendered Jesus’ words impotent. In Matthew 16:18 as He was establishing His Church Jesus gave us a guarantee. He said: "I will build my Church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." If the Protestant hypothesis is correct, the gates of hell did some serious prevailing and Jesus Christ is a liar. But of course such is not the case.
by Sebastian R. Fama
The earliest of the fathers are known as the Apostolic Fathers. Their writings come to us from the first two centuries of Church History. They were the immediate successors of the Apostles. Three of them were disciples of one or more of the Apostles. Clement of Rome was a disciple of the apostles Peter and Paul. Ignatius of Antioch and Polycarp of Smyrna were disciples of the Apostle John. Naturally we would expect that those who were taught directly by the Apostles would themselves believe and teach correctly.
Protestantism is based on the allegation that the Catholic Church became corrupt shortly after 312 AD. That’s when the emperor Constantine converted and made Christianity the state religion. It is alleged that pagan converts came into the Church bringing with them many of their pagan beliefs and practices. According to Protestant historians the pagan practices that were brought into the Church became the distinctive doctrines of Catholicism. Thus the Catholic Church was born and true Christianity was lost until the Reformation. But history tells us a different story.
Shortly after the death of the apostle John, his disciple, Ignatius of Antioch, referred to the Church as the Catholic Church. In his Letter to the Smyrnaeans he wrote: "Where the bishop is present, there is the Catholic Church" (8:2 [A.D. 107]).
In reading the Early Fathers we see a Church with bishops in authority over priests and deacons. We see a church that baptized infants and believed in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. We see a Church that believed in the primacy of Rome, the intercession of the saints in heaven and the Immaculate Conception of Mary. Thus we are lead to the inescapable conclusion that the early Church was the Catholic Church.
As you can see, the writings of the Early Fathers are especially helpful in refuting the Protestant claim that many Catholic doctrines were invented in later years. Although they are wrong concerning the age of Catholic doctrines their reasoning is sound. If a teaching appears after the apostolic age without evidence of previous support it must be false. Curiously enough though, they abandon this line of reasoning when it comes to many of their own beliefs such as the doctrine of Scripture Alone (mid 1500’s), The Rapture (late 1800’s), the licitness of artificial contraception (1930) and many others.
It is important to note that some doctrines existed in a primitive form during the early years. These doctrines would develop over time. One example is the Doctrine of the Trinity. All of its elements were present at the beginning but it wasn’t clearly defined the way it is today. It wasn’t until later that it was fully understood. This would not make it a late teaching as all of the information was there from the beginning. Other doctrines were developed in this same way.
Also worthy of note is the fact that the Early Fathers occasionally disagreed on minor issues that were not yet settled by the Church. This does not present us with a problem as we do not claim that the Fathers were infallible. While they were not infallible they were unmistakably Catholic. They clearly illustrate the fact that the early Church had no resemblance to Protestantism.
John Henry Newman was one of the more famous converts to Catholicism. After studying the Early Fathers he wrote: "The Christianity of history is not Protestantism. If ever there were a safe truth it is this, and Protestantism has ever felt it so; to be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant" (An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine).
Christianity was started by Christ 2000 years ago and it has existed for 2000 years. It didn’t go away for 1200 years and come back. Indeed that would have rendered Jesus’ words impotent. In Matthew 16:18 as He was establishing His Church Jesus gave us a guarantee. He said: "I will build my Church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." If the Protestant hypothesis is correct, the gates of hell did some serious prevailing and Jesus Christ is a liar. But of course such is not the case.
On this Rock: Peter is the First Pope
James Akin
I read a book by a Catholic author who gave a long quote from Matthew 16 in his section on the pope. In this passage Christ says, "You are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church." Up to this time I had always thought the rock on which the Church was built is the revelation that Jesus is the Christ, and I could argue this position well. As my eyes scanned the passage, I noticed for the first time a structural feature in the text which required that Peter be the rock.
In Matthew 16:17-19 Jesus makes three statements to Peter: (a) "Blessed are you Simon Bar-Jonah," (b) "You are Peter," and (c) "I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven." The first statement is clearly a blessing, something which builds Peter up and magnifies him. Christ declares him blessed because he received a special revelation from God.
The third statement is also a blessing: Christ declares that he will give Peter the keys to the kingdom. This is clearly a beatitude, something that magnifies and builds Peter up.
And if Christ's first and third statements to Peter are blessings, the middle statement, in its immediate context, also must be a blessing.
This was a problem, because in order to defend the view that Peter is not the rock on which the Church is built, I had to appeal to a minor difference in the Greek text between the word used for Peter () and the word used for rock ().
According to standard anti-Catholic interpretation, means "a small stone" while means "a large mass of rock," and the statement "You are Peter [] ," should be interpreted as something that stresses Peter's insignificance.
Evangelicals picture Christ as having meant, "You are a small stone, Peter, but I will build my Church on this great mass of rock which is the revelation of my identity."
One problem with this interpretation, a problem that many Protestant Bible scholars will admit,[1] is that while and did have these meanings in some ancient Greek poetry, the distinction was gone by the first century, when Matthew's Gospel was written. At that time the two words meant the same thing: a rock.
Another problem is that when he addressed Peter, Jesus was not speaking Greek, but Aramaic, a cousin language of Hebrew. In Aramaic there is no difference between the two words which in Greek are rendered as and . They are both ; that's why Paul often refers to Peter as [2] (cf. 1 Cor. 15:5, Gal. 2:9).
What Christ actually said was, "You are and on this I will build my Church."
But even if the words and did have different meanings, the Protestant reading of two different "rocks" would not fit the context. The second statement to Peter would be something which minimized or diminished him, pointing out his insignificance, with the result that Jesus would be saying, "Blessed are you, Simon Bar- Jonah! (You are an insignificant little pebble.) Here are the keys to the kingdom of heaven!" Such an incongruous sequence of statements would have been not merely odd, but inexplicable. (Many Protestant commentators recognize this and do their best to deny the obvious sense of this passage, however implausible their explanations may be.)
I also noticed that the Lord's three statements to Peter had two parts, and the second parts explain the first. The reason Peter was "blessed" was because "flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven" (v.17). The meaning of the name change, "You are Rock," is explained by the promise, "On this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it" (v. 18). The purpose of the keys is explained by Jesus' commission, "Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven" (v.19). A careful reading of these three statements, paying attention to their immediate context and interrelatedness, clearly shows that Peter was the rock about which Jesus spoke.
These and other considerations showed me that the standard anti-Catholic interpretations of this text could not stand up to careful biblical scrutiny. They were forced to wrench the middle statement to Peter out of its context.
I reversed my interpretation and concluded that Peter was indeed the rock on which Jesus built his Church. This is what an unbiased reader looking at the grammar and literary structure of the text would conclude.
If Peter in fact was the rock Jesus was talking about, that meant he was the head apostle (the Greek text reveals that Peter alone was singled out for this praise, and he alone was given the special authority symbolized by the keys of the kingdom of heaven, though other disciples shared in a more general sense Peter's authority of binding and loosing [cf. Matt. 18:18]). If he was the head apostle, then once Christ had ascended into heaven, Peter would have been the earthly head of the Church, subordinate to Christ's heavenly headship.
And if Peter was the earthly head of the Church, he fit the most basic definition of the office of the pope. As a result, I had to conclude that Catholics were right in saying that Peter was the first pope.
I read a book by a Catholic author who gave a long quote from Matthew 16 in his section on the pope. In this passage Christ says, "You are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church." Up to this time I had always thought the rock on which the Church was built is the revelation that Jesus is the Christ, and I could argue this position well. As my eyes scanned the passage, I noticed for the first time a structural feature in the text which required that Peter be the rock.
In Matthew 16:17-19 Jesus makes three statements to Peter: (a) "Blessed are you Simon Bar-Jonah," (b) "You are Peter," and (c) "I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven." The first statement is clearly a blessing, something which builds Peter up and magnifies him. Christ declares him blessed because he received a special revelation from God.
The third statement is also a blessing: Christ declares that he will give Peter the keys to the kingdom. This is clearly a beatitude, something that magnifies and builds Peter up.
And if Christ's first and third statements to Peter are blessings, the middle statement, in its immediate context, also must be a blessing.
This was a problem, because in order to defend the view that Peter is not the rock on which the Church is built, I had to appeal to a minor difference in the Greek text between the word used for Peter (
According to standard anti-Catholic interpretation,
Evangelicals picture Christ as having meant, "You are a small stone, Peter, but I will build my Church on this great mass of rock which is the revelation of my identity."
One problem with this interpretation, a problem that many Protestant Bible scholars will admit,[1] is that while
Another problem is that when he addressed Peter, Jesus was not speaking Greek, but Aramaic, a cousin language of Hebrew. In Aramaic there is no difference between the two words which in Greek are rendered as
What Christ actually said was, "You are
But even if the words
I also noticed that the Lord's three statements to Peter had two parts, and the second parts explain the first. The reason Peter was "blessed" was because "flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven" (v.17). The meaning of the name change, "You are Rock," is explained by the promise, "On this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it" (v. 18). The purpose of the keys is explained by Jesus' commission, "Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven" (v.19). A careful reading of these three statements, paying attention to their immediate context and interrelatedness, clearly shows that Peter was the rock about which Jesus spoke.
These and other considerations showed me that the standard anti-Catholic interpretations of this text could not stand up to careful biblical scrutiny. They were forced to wrench the middle statement to Peter out of its context.
I reversed my interpretation and concluded that Peter was indeed the rock on which Jesus built his Church. This is what an unbiased reader looking at the grammar and literary structure of the text would conclude.
If Peter in fact was the rock Jesus was talking about, that meant he was the head apostle (the Greek text reveals that Peter alone was singled out for this praise, and he alone was given the special authority symbolized by the keys of the kingdom of heaven, though other disciples shared in a more general sense Peter's authority of binding and loosing [cf. Matt. 18:18]). If he was the head apostle, then once Christ had ascended into heaven, Peter would have been the earthly head of the Church, subordinate to Christ's heavenly headship.
And if Peter was the earthly head of the Church, he fit the most basic definition of the office of the pope. As a result, I had to conclude that Catholics were right in saying that Peter was the first pope.
Catholic fidelity to the letter of Scripture: doctrine rests on literal interpretation
James Akin in http://www.ewtn.com/library/ANSWERS/AKINSTOR.htm
Leon my friend wrote, "Most of the Catholic distinctives that are criticized by our Evangelical brothers are rooted in taking Scripture at face value." This claim shocked my Protestant sensibilities. "What does he mean? Catholics take the Bible at face value on the points where Protestants criticize them?" I asked, flabbergasted at the thought. "How can he possible say that? Everyone knows it's Protestants, not Catholics, who are taking the Bible at face value!"
Leon backed up his shocking statement by citing these verses: "Jesus said to them, 'I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you'" (John 6:53); "This is my body . . . " (Luke 22:19); "I tell you the truth, unless a man is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God" (John 3:5); "[D]on't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?" (Rom. 6:3); "baptism . . . now saves you . . . " (1 Pet. 3:21); "If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven" (John 20:23); "And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church . . . " (Matt. 16:18).
I thought I could deal with most of these verses, but I had no idea how to refute the Catholic interpretation of 1 Peter 3:21 and John 20:23. Most startling was the very suggestion that Catholic theology rested on the literal interpretation of the Bible. This thought stayed with me and kept bugging me. Eventually it played a significant role in my conversion to the Catholic Church.
Leon my friend wrote, "Most of the Catholic distinctives that are criticized by our Evangelical brothers are rooted in taking Scripture at face value." This claim shocked my Protestant sensibilities. "What does he mean? Catholics take the Bible at face value on the points where Protestants criticize them?" I asked, flabbergasted at the thought. "How can he possible say that? Everyone knows it's Protestants, not Catholics, who are taking the Bible at face value!"
Leon backed up his shocking statement by citing these verses: "Jesus said to them, 'I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you'" (John 6:53); "This is my body . . . " (Luke 22:19); "I tell you the truth, unless a man is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God" (John 3:5); "[D]on't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?" (Rom. 6:3); "baptism . . . now saves you . . . " (1 Pet. 3:21); "If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven" (John 20:23); "And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church . . . " (Matt. 16:18).
I thought I could deal with most of these verses, but I had no idea how to refute the Catholic interpretation of 1 Peter 3:21 and John 20:23. Most startling was the very suggestion that Catholic theology rested on the literal interpretation of the Bible. This thought stayed with me and kept bugging me. Eventually it played a significant role in my conversion to the Catholic Church.
Scriptural passages that contradicted sola fide (faith alone)
James Akin in http://www.ewtn.com/library/ANSWERS/AKINSTOR.htm
I began to have problems with the two fundamental doctrines of Protestantism: sola fide, the claim that we are saved by faith alone, and sola scriptura, the claim that Christians are to use only the Bible in matters of doctrine and practice.
The first began to be problematic for me because I started noticing certain passages in Scripture which contradicted the doctrine. In Romans 2:7, for example, the Apostle Paul tells his readers that God will give the reward of eternal life to those who "seek after glory, honor, and immortality by perseverance in working good."
In Galatians 6:6-10, Paul tells his readers that those who "sow to the Spirit" by "doing good to all" will from the Spirit reap a harvest of eternal life. It was especially noteworthy that I was finding these verses in Romans and Galatians, the very epistles on which Protestants claim to base the doctrine of justification by faith alone.
These verses don't mean we earn our salvation by good works, a doctrine many Protestants mistakenly attribute to the Catholic Church, but they do mean that the "faith alone" formula is not an accurate description of what the Bible teaches about salvation. These passages reveal that, as a result of God's grace, we are capable of doing acts of love which please God and which he freely chooses to reward. One of the rewards, in fact the primary reward, is the gift of eternal life (cf. Romans 2:6-7).
There was still the matter of how to explain passages such as Romans 3:28, where Paul says that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law, but this did not trouble me much since I had recognized from my earliest days of Bible reading that Paul was talking about the Mosaic Law in Romans and Galatians, which is why he spent so much time hammering home the fact that it is not necessary to be circumcised to be saved-circumcision being one of the key rituals of the Mosaic Law. What Paul is saying is absolutely true: We are justified by faith apart from works of the Mosaic Law.
This would be more obvious to English-speaking readers if translators used the Hebrew word for law, Torah, which is also the name of the first five books of the Bible; they contain the law of Moses. Paul said, "We hold that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Torah" (Rom. 3:28). We can prove this by looking at the very next verse: "Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also" (Rom. 3:29).
If Paul did not mean "works of the Torah," then this question and its answer would be meaningless. By the phrase "works of the Law" Paul refers to something Jews have but Gentiles don't: work of the Mosaic Law. He makes this point in the next verse: "Since God is one; and he will justify the circumcised [Jews] on the ground of their faith and the uncircumcised [Gentiles] through their faith" (Rom. 3:30). So the "works of the Law" Paul talks about in verse 28 are those works which characterize Jews, not Gentiles, the chief work being circumcision (cf. 3:29-30).
This means that the Jewish laws of circumcision, ritual purity, kosher dietary prescriptions, and the Jewish festal calendar are, now that we are under the New Covenant in Christ, entirely irrelevant to our salvation. Keeping the ceremonial Law of Moses is not necessary for Christians. What is important is keeping "the law of Christ" (Gal. 6:2) which is summarized as "faith working through love" (also translated as "faith made effective through love" [Gal. 5:6]).
One passage that highlighted the sacramental manner in which God gives us his grace was 1 Peter 3:20-21, where we're told that "God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also; not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a good conscience toward God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ."
The meaning of Peter's statement, "baptism now saves you," is clear from the context of the passage. He's referring to the sacrament of water baptism, because he says eight people were "saved through water." Baptism does not save us by removing dirt from our bodies. The merely physical effects of pouring water in baptism are unimportant.
What counts is the action of the Holy Spirit though baptism, for in it we "pledge . . . a good conscience toward God," (that is, we make a baptismal pledge of repentance) and are saved "by the resurrection of Jesus Christ."
I began to discover this sacramental principle throughout the Bible. In both the Old and the New Testament there are incidents where God uses physical means to convey grace. One striking example is the case of the woman with a hemorrhage:
"When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, 'If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.' Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering. At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, 'Who touched my clothes?' 'You see the people crowding against you,' his disciples answered, 'and yet you can ask, "Who touched me?"' But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. He said to her, 'Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering'" (Mark 5:27-34, NIV).
This passage contains all the elements of the sacramental principle:
the woman's faith, the physical means (touching Jesus' clothes), and the supernatural power that went out from Jesus. When the woman came up to him and, with faith, touched his garment, the power of God was sent forth, and she was healed. This is how the sacraments work; God uses physical signs (water, oil, bread, wine, the laying on of hands) as vehicles for his grace, which we receive in faith.
Thomas Aquinas pointed out that since we are not simply spiritual beings, but physical creatures also, it is fitting for God to give us his spiritual gift of grace through physical means. I later discovered that even Martin Luther recognized this. In his Short Catechism he stated that baptism "works the forgiveness of sins, delivers from death and the devil, and grants eternal salvation to all who believe." Sadly, he ignored the Biblical evidence for five of the seven sacraments (retaining only baptism and the Lord's Supper), and most Protestants lost even Luther's view of the sacraments as means of grace, departing from the Biblical teaching that "baptism now saves you."
God sometimes gives saving grace apart from baptism (cf. Acts 10:4448), but he ordained baptism to be the normative means through which we first come to him and become members of his Church. Peter told the crowd on the day of Pentecost, "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit" (Acts 2:38). Paul was told at his baptism, "And now what are you waiting for? Get up, be baptized and wash your sins away, calling on his name" (Acts 22:16).
I began to have problems with the two fundamental doctrines of Protestantism: sola fide, the claim that we are saved by faith alone, and sola scriptura, the claim that Christians are to use only the Bible in matters of doctrine and practice.
The first began to be problematic for me because I started noticing certain passages in Scripture which contradicted the doctrine. In Romans 2:7, for example, the Apostle Paul tells his readers that God will give the reward of eternal life to those who "seek after glory, honor, and immortality by perseverance in working good."
In Galatians 6:6-10, Paul tells his readers that those who "sow to the Spirit" by "doing good to all" will from the Spirit reap a harvest of eternal life. It was especially noteworthy that I was finding these verses in Romans and Galatians, the very epistles on which Protestants claim to base the doctrine of justification by faith alone.
These verses don't mean we earn our salvation by good works, a doctrine many Protestants mistakenly attribute to the Catholic Church, but they do mean that the "faith alone" formula is not an accurate description of what the Bible teaches about salvation. These passages reveal that, as a result of God's grace, we are capable of doing acts of love which please God and which he freely chooses to reward. One of the rewards, in fact the primary reward, is the gift of eternal life (cf. Romans 2:6-7).
There was still the matter of how to explain passages such as Romans 3:28, where Paul says that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law, but this did not trouble me much since I had recognized from my earliest days of Bible reading that Paul was talking about the Mosaic Law in Romans and Galatians, which is why he spent so much time hammering home the fact that it is not necessary to be circumcised to be saved-circumcision being one of the key rituals of the Mosaic Law. What Paul is saying is absolutely true: We are justified by faith apart from works of the Mosaic Law.
This would be more obvious to English-speaking readers if translators used the Hebrew word for law, Torah, which is also the name of the first five books of the Bible; they contain the law of Moses. Paul said, "We hold that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Torah" (Rom. 3:28). We can prove this by looking at the very next verse: "Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also" (Rom. 3:29).
If Paul did not mean "works of the Torah," then this question and its answer would be meaningless. By the phrase "works of the Law" Paul refers to something Jews have but Gentiles don't: work of the Mosaic Law. He makes this point in the next verse: "Since God is one; and he will justify the circumcised [Jews] on the ground of their faith and the uncircumcised [Gentiles] through their faith" (Rom. 3:30). So the "works of the Law" Paul talks about in verse 28 are those works which characterize Jews, not Gentiles, the chief work being circumcision (cf. 3:29-30).
This means that the Jewish laws of circumcision, ritual purity, kosher dietary prescriptions, and the Jewish festal calendar are, now that we are under the New Covenant in Christ, entirely irrelevant to our salvation. Keeping the ceremonial Law of Moses is not necessary for Christians. What is important is keeping "the law of Christ" (Gal. 6:2) which is summarized as "faith working through love" (also translated as "faith made effective through love" [Gal. 5:6]).
One passage that highlighted the sacramental manner in which God gives us his grace was 1 Peter 3:20-21, where we're told that "God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also; not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a good conscience toward God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ."
The meaning of Peter's statement, "baptism now saves you," is clear from the context of the passage. He's referring to the sacrament of water baptism, because he says eight people were "saved through water." Baptism does not save us by removing dirt from our bodies. The merely physical effects of pouring water in baptism are unimportant.
What counts is the action of the Holy Spirit though baptism, for in it we "pledge . . . a good conscience toward God," (that is, we make a baptismal pledge of repentance) and are saved "by the resurrection of Jesus Christ."
I began to discover this sacramental principle throughout the Bible. In both the Old and the New Testament there are incidents where God uses physical means to convey grace. One striking example is the case of the woman with a hemorrhage:
"When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, 'If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.' Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering. At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, 'Who touched my clothes?' 'You see the people crowding against you,' his disciples answered, 'and yet you can ask, "Who touched me?"' But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. He said to her, 'Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering'" (Mark 5:27-34, NIV).
This passage contains all the elements of the sacramental principle:
the woman's faith, the physical means (touching Jesus' clothes), and the supernatural power that went out from Jesus. When the woman came up to him and, with faith, touched his garment, the power of God was sent forth, and she was healed. This is how the sacraments work; God uses physical signs (water, oil, bread, wine, the laying on of hands) as vehicles for his grace, which we receive in faith.
Thomas Aquinas pointed out that since we are not simply spiritual beings, but physical creatures also, it is fitting for God to give us his spiritual gift of grace through physical means. I later discovered that even Martin Luther recognized this. In his Short Catechism he stated that baptism "works the forgiveness of sins, delivers from death and the devil, and grants eternal salvation to all who believe." Sadly, he ignored the Biblical evidence for five of the seven sacraments (retaining only baptism and the Lord's Supper), and most Protestants lost even Luther's view of the sacraments as means of grace, departing from the Biblical teaching that "baptism now saves you."
God sometimes gives saving grace apart from baptism (cf. Acts 10:4448), but he ordained baptism to be the normative means through which we first come to him and become members of his Church. Peter told the crowd on the day of Pentecost, "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit" (Acts 2:38). Paul was told at his baptism, "And now what are you waiting for? Get up, be baptized and wash your sins away, calling on his name" (Acts 22:16).
I had to trust the Church as reliable witness to the canon of Scripture
James Akin in http://www.ewtn.com/library/ANSWERS/AKINSTOR.htm
The Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura ... began to trouble me as I wondered how it is that we can know for certain which books belong in the Bible. Certain books of the New Testament, such as the synoptic gospels, we can show to be reliable historical accounts of Jesus' life, but there were a number of New Testament books (e.g., Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude, and Revelation) whose authorship and canonical status were debated in the early Church. Eventually the Church decided in their favor and included them in the canon of inspired books, but I saw that I, a person two thousand years removed from their writing, had no possibility of proving these works were genuinely apostolic. I simply had to take the Church's word on it.
This meant that for one very foundational doctrine-the doctrine of what Scripture is-I had to trust the Church since there was no way to show from within Scripture itself exactly what the books of the Bible should be. But I realized that by looking to the Church as an authentic and reliable witness to the canon, I was violating the principle of sola scriptura. The "Bible only" theory turned out to be self-refuting, since it cannot tell us which books belong in the Bible and which don't!
What was more, my studies in Church history showed that the canon of the Bible was not finally settled until about three hundred years after the last apostle died. If I was going to claim that the Church had done its job and picked exactly the right books for the Bible, this meant that the Church had made an infallible decision three hundred years after the apostolic age, a realization which made it believable that the Church could make even later infallible decisions, and that the Church could make such decisions even today.
The Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura ... began to trouble me as I wondered how it is that we can know for certain which books belong in the Bible. Certain books of the New Testament, such as the synoptic gospels, we can show to be reliable historical accounts of Jesus' life, but there were a number of New Testament books (e.g., Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude, and Revelation) whose authorship and canonical status were debated in the early Church. Eventually the Church decided in their favor and included them in the canon of inspired books, but I saw that I, a person two thousand years removed from their writing, had no possibility of proving these works were genuinely apostolic. I simply had to take the Church's word on it.
This meant that for one very foundational doctrine-the doctrine of what Scripture is-I had to trust the Church since there was no way to show from within Scripture itself exactly what the books of the Bible should be. But I realized that by looking to the Church as an authentic and reliable witness to the canon, I was violating the principle of sola scriptura. The "Bible only" theory turned out to be self-refuting, since it cannot tell us which books belong in the Bible and which don't!
What was more, my studies in Church history showed that the canon of the Bible was not finally settled until about three hundred years after the last apostle died. If I was going to claim that the Church had done its job and picked exactly the right books for the Bible, this meant that the Church had made an infallible decision three hundred years after the apostolic age, a realization which made it believable that the Church could make even later infallible decisions, and that the Church could make such decisions even today.
Friday, September 2, 2011
God loves us - CCC
Catechism of the Catholic Church
God is Love
218 In the course of its history, Israel was able to discover that God had only one reason to reveal himself to them, a single motive for choosing them from among all peoples as his special possession: his sheer gratuitous love.38 And thanks to the prophets Israel understood that it was again out of love that God never stopped saving them and pardoning their unfaithfulness and sins.39
219 God's love for Israel is compared to a father's love for his son. His love for his people is stronger than a mother's for her children. God loves his people more than a bridegroom his beloved; his love will be victorious over even the worst infidelities and will extend to his most precious gift: "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son."40
220 God's love is "everlasting":41 "For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you."42 Through Jeremiah, God declares to his people, "I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you."43
221 But St. John goes even further when he affirms that "God is love":44 God's very being is love. By sending his only Son and the Spirit of Love in the fullness of time, God has revealed his innermost secret:45 God himself is an eternal exchange of love, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and he has destined us to share in that exchange.
39 Cf. Isa 43:1-7; (Since you are precious and honored in my sight,
and because I love you,
I will give people in exchange for you,
nations in exchange for your life.
5 Do not be afraid, for I am with you;
I will bring your children from the east
and gather you from the west.
6 I will say to the north, ‘Give them up!’
and to the south, ‘Do not hold them back.’
Bring my sons from afar
and my daughters from the ends of the earth—
7 everyone who is called by my name,
whom I created for my glory,
whom I formed and made.” )
Hos 2. Say of your brothers, ‘My people,’ and of your sisters, ‘My loved one.’
40 Jn 3:16
Hos 11:1
Hosea 11
God’s Love for Israel
1 “When Israel was a child, I loved him,
and out of Egypt I called my son. )
Isa 49:14-15 15 “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast
and have no compassion on the child she has borne?
Though she may forget,
I will not forget you!
Isa 62:4-5 As a young man marries a young woman,
so will your Builder marry you;
as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride,
so will your God rejoice over you.
Ezek 16 http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ezekiel%2016&version=NASB
41 Isa 54:8. 8 “In an [a]outburst of anger
I hid My face from you for a moment,
But with everlasting lovingkindness I will have compassion on you,”
Says the LORD your Redeemer.
42 Isa 54:10 10 “For the mountains may be removed and the hills may shake,
But My lovingkindness will not be removed from you,
And My covenant of peace will not be shaken,”
Says the LORD who has compassion on you.
43 Jer 31:3
3 The LORD appeared to [a]him from afar, saying,
“I have loved you with an everlasting love;
Therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness.
44 l Jn 4:8,16. Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is [a]born of God and knows God. 8 The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
16 We have come to know and have believed the love which God has [d]for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
=======
The Holy Spirit - God's gift
733 "God is Love"124 and love is his first gift, containing all others. "God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us."125
124 1 Jn 4:8,1.
125 Rom 5:5.
God is Love
218 In the course of its history, Israel was able to discover that God had only one reason to reveal himself to them, a single motive for choosing them from among all peoples as his special possession: his sheer gratuitous love.38 And thanks to the prophets Israel understood that it was again out of love that God never stopped saving them and pardoning their unfaithfulness and sins.39
219 God's love for Israel is compared to a father's love for his son. His love for his people is stronger than a mother's for her children. God loves his people more than a bridegroom his beloved; his love will be victorious over even the worst infidelities and will extend to his most precious gift: "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son."40
220 God's love is "everlasting":41 "For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you."42 Through Jeremiah, God declares to his people, "I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you."43
221 But St. John goes even further when he affirms that "God is love":44 God's very being is love. By sending his only Son and the Spirit of Love in the fullness of time, God has revealed his innermost secret:45 God himself is an eternal exchange of love, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and he has destined us to share in that exchange.
39 Cf. Isa 43:1-7; (Since you are precious and honored in my sight,
and because I love you,
I will give people in exchange for you,
nations in exchange for your life.
5 Do not be afraid, for I am with you;
I will bring your children from the east
and gather you from the west.
6 I will say to the north, ‘Give them up!’
and to the south, ‘Do not hold them back.’
Bring my sons from afar
and my daughters from the ends of the earth—
7 everyone who is called by my name,
whom I created for my glory,
whom I formed and made.” )
Hos 2. Say of your brothers, ‘My people,’ and of your sisters, ‘My loved one.’
40 Jn 3:16
Hos 11:1
Hosea 11
God’s Love for Israel
1 “When Israel was a child, I loved him,
and out of Egypt I called my son. )
Isa 49:14-15 15 “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast
and have no compassion on the child she has borne?
Though she may forget,
I will not forget you!
Isa 62:4-5 As a young man marries a young woman,
so will your Builder marry you;
as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride,
so will your God rejoice over you.
Ezek 16 http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ezekiel%2016&version=NASB
41 Isa 54:8. 8 “In an [a]outburst of anger
I hid My face from you for a moment,
But with everlasting lovingkindness I will have compassion on you,”
Says the LORD your Redeemer.
42 Isa 54:10 10 “For the mountains may be removed and the hills may shake,
But My lovingkindness will not be removed from you,
And My covenant of peace will not be shaken,”
Says the LORD who has compassion on you.
43 Jer 31:3
3 The LORD appeared to [a]him from afar, saying,
“I have loved you with an everlasting love;
Therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness.
44 l Jn 4:8,16. Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is [a]born of God and knows God. 8 The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
16 We have come to know and have believed the love which God has [d]for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
=======
The Holy Spirit - God's gift
733 "God is Love"124 and love is his first gift, containing all others. "God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us."125
124 1 Jn 4:8,1.
125 Rom 5:5.
Vocation of the Lay Christian - CCC
THE LAY FAITHFUL
897 "The term 'laity' is here understood to mean all the faithful except those in Holy Orders and those who belong to a religious state approved by the Church. That is, the faithful, who by Baptism are incorporated into Christ and integrated into the People of God, are made sharers in their particular way in the priestly, prophetic, and kingly office of Christ, and have their own part to play in the mission of the whole Christian people in the Church and in the World."430
The vocation of lay people
898 "By reason of their special vocation it belongs to the laity to seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and directing them according to God's will. . . . It pertains to them in a special way so to illuminate and order all temporal things with which they are closely associated that these may always be effected and grow according to Christ and maybe to the glory of the Creator and Redeemer."431
899 The initiative of lay Christians is necessary especially when the matter involves discovering or inventing the means for permeating social, political, and economic realities with the demands of Christian doctrine and life. This initiative is a normal element of the life of the Church:
Lay believers are in the front line of Church life; for them the Church is the animating principle of human society. Therefore, they in particular ought to have an ever-clearer consciousness not only of belonging to the Church, but of being the Church, that is to say, the community of the faithful on earth under the leadership of the Pope, the common Head, and of the bishops in communion with him. They are the Church.432
900 Since, like all the faithful, lay Christians are entrusted by God with the apostolate by virtue of their Baptism and Confirmation, they have the right and duty, individually or grouped in associations, to work so that the divine message of salvation may be known and accepted by all men throughout the earth. This duty is the more pressing when it is only through them that men can hear the Gospel and know Christ. Their activity in ecclesial communities is so necessary that, for the most part, the apostolate of the pastors cannot be fully effective without it.433
The participation of lay people in Christ's priestly office
901 "Hence the laity, dedicated as they are to Christ and anointed by the Holy Spirit, are marvelously called and prepared so that even richer fruits of the Spirit maybe produced in them. For all their works, prayers, and apostolic undertakings, family and married life, daily work, relaxation of mind and body, if they are accomplished in the Spirit - indeed even the hardships of life if patiently born - all these become spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. In the celebration of the Eucharist these may most fittingly be offered to the Father along with the body of the Lord. And so, worshipping everywhere by their holy actions, the laity consecrate the world itself to God, everywhere offering worship by the holiness of their lives."434
902 In a very special way, parents share in the office of sanctifying "by leading a conjugal life in the Christian spirit and by seeing to the Christian education of their children."435
903 Lay people who possess the required qualities can be admitted permanently to the ministries of lector and acolyte.436 When the necessity of the Church warrants it and when ministers are lacking, lay persons, even if they are not lectors or acolytes, can also supply for certain of their offices, namely, to exercise the ministry of the word, to preside over liturgical prayers, to confer Baptism, and to distribute Holy Communion in accord with the prescriptions of law."437
Participation in Christ's prophetic office
904 "Christ . . . fulfills this prophetic office, not only by the hierarchy . . . but also by the laity. He accordingly both establishes them as witnesses and provides them with the sense of the faith [sensus fidei] and the grace of the word"438
To teach in order to lead others to faith is the task of every preacher and of each believer.439
905 Lay people also fulfill their prophetic mission by evangelization, "that is, the proclamation of Christ by word and the testimony of life." For lay people, "this evangelization . . . acquires a specific property and peculiar efficacy because it is accomplished in the ordinary circumstances of the world."440
This witness of life, however, is not the sole element in the apostolate; the true apostle is on the lookout for occasions of announcing Christ by word, either to unbelievers . . . or to the faithful.441
906 Lay people who are capable and trained may also collaborate in catechetical formation, in teaching the sacred sciences, and in use of the communications media.442
907 "In accord with the knowledge, competence, and preeminence which they possess, [lay people] have the right and even at times a duty to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church, and they have a right to make their opinion known to the other Christian faithful, with due regard to the integrity of faith and morals and reverence toward their pastors, and with consideration for the common good and the dignity of persons."443
Participation in Christ's kingly office
908 By his obedience unto death,444 Christ communicated to his disciples the gift of royal freedom, so that they might "by the self-abnegation of a holy life, overcome the reign of sin in themselves":445
That man is rightly called a king who makes his own body an obedient subject and, by governing himself with suitable rigor, refuses to let his passions breed rebellion in his soul, for he exercises a kind of royal power over himself. And because he knows how to rule his own person as king, so too does he sit as its judge. He will not let himself be imprisoned by sin, or thrown headlong into wickedness.446
909 "Moreover, by uniting their forces let the laity so remedy the institutions and conditions of the world when the latter are an inducement to sin, that these may be conformed to the norms of justice, favoring rather than hindering the practice of virtue. By so doing they will impregnate culture and human works with a moral value."447
910 "The laity can also feel called, or be in fact called, to cooperate with their pastors in the service of the ecclesial community, for the sake of its growth and life. This can be done through the exercise of different kinds of ministries according to the grace and charisms which the Lord has been pleased to bestow on them."448
911 In the Church, "lay members of the Christian faithful can cooperate in the exercise of this power [of governance] in accord with the norm of law."449 And so the Church provides for their presence at particular councils, diocesan synods, pastoral councils; the exercise of the pastoral care of a parish, collaboration in finance committees, and participation in ecclesiastical tribunals, etc.450
912 The faithful should "distinguish carefully between the rights and the duties which they have as belonging to the Church and those which fall to them as members of the human society. They will strive to unite the two harmoniously, remembering that in every temporal affair they are to be guided by a Christian conscience, since no human activity, even of the temporal order, can be withdrawn from God's dominion."451
913 "Thus, every person, through these gifts given to him, is at once the witness and the living instrument of the mission of the Church itself 'according to the measure of Christ's bestowal."'452
897 "The term 'laity' is here understood to mean all the faithful except those in Holy Orders and those who belong to a religious state approved by the Church. That is, the faithful, who by Baptism are incorporated into Christ and integrated into the People of God, are made sharers in their particular way in the priestly, prophetic, and kingly office of Christ, and have their own part to play in the mission of the whole Christian people in the Church and in the World."430
The vocation of lay people
898 "By reason of their special vocation it belongs to the laity to seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and directing them according to God's will. . . . It pertains to them in a special way so to illuminate and order all temporal things with which they are closely associated that these may always be effected and grow according to Christ and maybe to the glory of the Creator and Redeemer."431
899 The initiative of lay Christians is necessary especially when the matter involves discovering or inventing the means for permeating social, political, and economic realities with the demands of Christian doctrine and life. This initiative is a normal element of the life of the Church:
Lay believers are in the front line of Church life; for them the Church is the animating principle of human society. Therefore, they in particular ought to have an ever-clearer consciousness not only of belonging to the Church, but of being the Church, that is to say, the community of the faithful on earth under the leadership of the Pope, the common Head, and of the bishops in communion with him. They are the Church.432
900 Since, like all the faithful, lay Christians are entrusted by God with the apostolate by virtue of their Baptism and Confirmation, they have the right and duty, individually or grouped in associations, to work so that the divine message of salvation may be known and accepted by all men throughout the earth. This duty is the more pressing when it is only through them that men can hear the Gospel and know Christ. Their activity in ecclesial communities is so necessary that, for the most part, the apostolate of the pastors cannot be fully effective without it.433
The participation of lay people in Christ's priestly office
901 "Hence the laity, dedicated as they are to Christ and anointed by the Holy Spirit, are marvelously called and prepared so that even richer fruits of the Spirit maybe produced in them. For all their works, prayers, and apostolic undertakings, family and married life, daily work, relaxation of mind and body, if they are accomplished in the Spirit - indeed even the hardships of life if patiently born - all these become spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. In the celebration of the Eucharist these may most fittingly be offered to the Father along with the body of the Lord. And so, worshipping everywhere by their holy actions, the laity consecrate the world itself to God, everywhere offering worship by the holiness of their lives."434
902 In a very special way, parents share in the office of sanctifying "by leading a conjugal life in the Christian spirit and by seeing to the Christian education of their children."435
903 Lay people who possess the required qualities can be admitted permanently to the ministries of lector and acolyte.436 When the necessity of the Church warrants it and when ministers are lacking, lay persons, even if they are not lectors or acolytes, can also supply for certain of their offices, namely, to exercise the ministry of the word, to preside over liturgical prayers, to confer Baptism, and to distribute Holy Communion in accord with the prescriptions of law."437
Participation in Christ's prophetic office
904 "Christ . . . fulfills this prophetic office, not only by the hierarchy . . . but also by the laity. He accordingly both establishes them as witnesses and provides them with the sense of the faith [sensus fidei] and the grace of the word"438
To teach in order to lead others to faith is the task of every preacher and of each believer.439
905 Lay people also fulfill their prophetic mission by evangelization, "that is, the proclamation of Christ by word and the testimony of life." For lay people, "this evangelization . . . acquires a specific property and peculiar efficacy because it is accomplished in the ordinary circumstances of the world."440
This witness of life, however, is not the sole element in the apostolate; the true apostle is on the lookout for occasions of announcing Christ by word, either to unbelievers . . . or to the faithful.441
906 Lay people who are capable and trained may also collaborate in catechetical formation, in teaching the sacred sciences, and in use of the communications media.442
907 "In accord with the knowledge, competence, and preeminence which they possess, [lay people] have the right and even at times a duty to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church, and they have a right to make their opinion known to the other Christian faithful, with due regard to the integrity of faith and morals and reverence toward their pastors, and with consideration for the common good and the dignity of persons."443
Participation in Christ's kingly office
908 By his obedience unto death,444 Christ communicated to his disciples the gift of royal freedom, so that they might "by the self-abnegation of a holy life, overcome the reign of sin in themselves":445
That man is rightly called a king who makes his own body an obedient subject and, by governing himself with suitable rigor, refuses to let his passions breed rebellion in his soul, for he exercises a kind of royal power over himself. And because he knows how to rule his own person as king, so too does he sit as its judge. He will not let himself be imprisoned by sin, or thrown headlong into wickedness.446
909 "Moreover, by uniting their forces let the laity so remedy the institutions and conditions of the world when the latter are an inducement to sin, that these may be conformed to the norms of justice, favoring rather than hindering the practice of virtue. By so doing they will impregnate culture and human works with a moral value."447
910 "The laity can also feel called, or be in fact called, to cooperate with their pastors in the service of the ecclesial community, for the sake of its growth and life. This can be done through the exercise of different kinds of ministries according to the grace and charisms which the Lord has been pleased to bestow on them."448
911 In the Church, "lay members of the Christian faithful can cooperate in the exercise of this power [of governance] in accord with the norm of law."449 And so the Church provides for their presence at particular councils, diocesan synods, pastoral councils; the exercise of the pastoral care of a parish, collaboration in finance committees, and participation in ecclesiastical tribunals, etc.450
912 The faithful should "distinguish carefully between the rights and the duties which they have as belonging to the Church and those which fall to them as members of the human society. They will strive to unite the two harmoniously, remembering that in every temporal affair they are to be guided by a Christian conscience, since no human activity, even of the temporal order, can be withdrawn from God's dominion."451
913 "Thus, every person, through these gifts given to him, is at once the witness and the living instrument of the mission of the Church itself 'according to the measure of Christ's bestowal."'452
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