Responding to an email

[Brother Adam]

Hey Teresa,
I guess I was just surprised. I don't want
to jump to conclusions either, but I am doubtful that
you really do believe everything that Catholicism
does. I did a bit of research through a few Catholic
Councils, and made a short list of things that
Catholics believe that I feel are very shaky:

-"ever-virgin Mary" (2nd Council of Constantinople III
and VI)
-"one baptism for the remission of sins" (Council of
Trent, Third Session)
-anathema of all who do not "accept as sacred and
canonical" the Apocrapha (Council of Trent, Fourth
Session)
-that "no one dare or presume under any pretext...to
reject" the Latin Vulgate (Council of Trent, Fourth
Session)
-punishment of those who interpret Scripture contrary
to the mother Church (Council of Trent, Fourth
Session)
-anathema for those who say that infants should not be
baptized for the remission of sin (Council of Trent,
Fifth Session, 4)
-"no one ought to flatter himself with faith alone,
thinking that by faith alone he is made an heir and
will obtain the inheritance" (Council of Trent, Sixth
Session, Chapter XI)

By those, I and every other baptist I know would be
anathematized at least 4 times. Don't think I'm
judging you, I just want you to know what you've
gotten yourself into.

Chris


Hi Chris,

Blessed be our Lord Jesus Christ.

I hope this email finds you well. This is Teresa's husband. She shared your email with me knowing I have already been through the councils many times. I hope you don't mind. I will try not to be too long winded as I have a tendency too, but I love this stuff (theology).

First thanks for looking at some of the writings of the councils. The Church contains a great wealth of knowledge through the council documents, the Fathers of the Church, the Holy Scriptures, the catechisms, and all of her writings. I studied all of these and more than 350 books including a rudimentary knowledge of Greek and am now in the top theological and Christian education program in the nation. It took me three years of trying to prove the Catholic Church wrong through dialogue to finally realize the inevitable that is being realized by laymen and protestant pastors throughout the country.

I would like to offer absolutely free of charge a CD filled with the full documents of all 21 councils, several versions of the scriptures, the Catechism of the Catholic Church (the first universal catechism since the Catechism of the Council of Trent). It also contains hundreds of articles written to help you understand the Catholic faith. Just let me know your address at Cedarville and it will be in the mail.

Now to address some of your concerns. While I will address the council writings, I want to address the doctrine which you call into question more deeply first, rather than simply focusing on the context of what the council has written which is easy enough to take out of context.



The first is the perpetual virginity of Mary. Usually this is an easier doctrine to reconcile than is the sinlessness of Mary or her assumption and coronation. Since you have brought this up first though, we will address it first and save the others for another email. While Mary's perpetual virginity is never called into question until after the Protestant Reformation, let us start with scripture and later on move into the teachings of the early Church. In John 19:27 Jesus from the cross places Mary in John's charge; Jesus could not have done this if he had brothers. This gesture in Jewish culture would have been highly insulting. 1 Cor. 7:37-38 tells us that celibacy is preferable to a conjugal state. With Mary as the ark of the New Covenant (she literally held within her womb Jesus, the Son of God, the Lamb of God).

Karl Keating writes: "To begin with, the Protoevangelium records that when Mary’s birth was prophesied, her mother, St. Anne, vowed that she would devote the child to the service of the Lord, as Samuel had been by his mother (1 Sam. 1:11). Mary would thus serve the Lord at the Temple, as women had for centuries (1 Sam. 2:22), and as Anna the prophetess did at the time of Jesus’ birth (Luke 2:36–37). A life of continual, devoted service to the Lord at the Temple meant that Mary would not be able to live the ordinary life of a child-rearing mother. Rather, she was vowed to a life of perpetual virginity.

However, due to considerations of ceremonial cleanliness, it was eventually necessary for Mary, a consecrated "virgin of the Lord," to have a guardian or protector who would respect her vow of virginity. Thus, according to the Protoevangelium, Joseph, an elderly widower who already had children, was chosen to be her spouse. (This would also explain why Joseph was apparently dead by the time of Jesus’ adult ministry, since he does not appear during it in the gospels, and since Mary is entrusted to John, rather than to her husband Joseph, at the crucifixion).

According to the Protoevangelium, Joseph was required to regard Mary’s vow of virginity with the utmost respect. The gravity of his responsibility as the guardian of a virgin was indicated by the fact that, when she was discovered to be with child, he had to answer to the Temple authorities, who thought him guilty of defiling a virgin of the Lord. Mary was also accused of having forsaken the Lord by breaking her vow. Keeping this in mind, it is an incredible insult to the Blessed Virgin to say that she broke her vow by bearing children other than her Lord and God, who was conceived through the power of the Holy Spirit.

The perpetual virginity of Mary has always been reconciled with the biblical references to Christ’s brethren through a proper understanding of the meaning of the term "brethren." The understanding that the brethren of the Lord were Jesus’ stepbrothers (children of Joseph) rather than half-brothers (children of Mary) was the most common one until the time of Jerome (fourth century). It was Jerome who introduced the possibility that Christ’s brethren were actually his cousins, since in Jewish idiom cousins were also referred to as "brethren." The Catholic Church allows the faithful to hold either view, since both are compatible with the reality of Mary’s perpetual virginity." I strongly suggest "Hail, Holy Queen by Dr. Scott Hahn for further in depth study.



Your next question is concerning baptismal regeneration. Such a view is clearly seen in the scriptures, but in order to view it properly we must not look at the New Covenant as a contract between God and man, an exchange of goods (you give me faith I give you life). There is much more at play here than a simple contract. It is a covenant. For believers we aren't simply saved from damnation, we become adopted children of God. Covenants are filial, every single covenant in the old testament changed a family tree. Baptism in the New Testament is never treated as merely a symbol (though it is also a symbol - that of being unitive). Check out 1 Peter 3:18-21 ("This prefigured baptism, which now SAVES you"). Compare it with Zech. 13:1 and Ezekiel 36:25. Cleansing through water was not symbolic. John 3:5 has only one possible meaning when it is taken in context, and that is not symbolic. In Acts 2:38 Peter does not speak of symbols when referring to baptism. Acts 22:16 we hear "Now, why delay? Repent and be baptized and your sins washed away, calling upon his name." Gal 3:27 - "For those of you who were baptized in Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ". He did not say "For those of you who believed in Christ". Titus 3:4-7 is also a clear example of a regenerative baptism. Nothing is said in scripture of symbolic baptisms, but of rebirth through baptisms. Good books for further reading include "What Catholics Really Believe" by Keating, "A Map of Life" by Sheed, "Crossing the Tiber by Stephan Ray, and I'll throw in there Orthodoxy by Chesterton and "Transformed by Grace" by Mork.



Next I will address the "Apocrypha". The Apocrypha is not canonical and no one is certianly expected to accept them as such. They include 3 and 4 Edras, The Gospel of Thomas, and so on. However the Deuterocanonicals are inspired scripture and have always been believed to be so except by two groups of people - Protestants and Jews who reject Jesus Christ. Here is an excellent excerpt on the canon:

B. THE CANON AMONG THE ALEXANDRIAN JEWS (DEUTEROCANONICAL BOOKS)

The most striking difference between the Catholic and Protestant Bibles is the presence in the former of a number of writings which are wanting in the latter and also in the Hebrew Bible, which became the Old Testament of Protestantism. These number seven books: Tobias (Tobit), Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, I and II Machabees, and three documents added to protocanonical books, viz., the supplement to Esther, from x, 4, to the end, the Canticle of the Three Youths (Song of the Three Children) in Daniel, iii, and the stories of Susanna and the Elders and Bel and the Dragon, forming the closing chapters of the Catholic version of that book. Of these works, Tobias and Judith were written originally in Aramaic, perhaps in Hebrew; Baruch and I Machabees in Hebrew, while Wisdom and II Machabees were certainly composed in Greek. The probabilities favour Hebrew as the original language of the addition to Esther, and Greek for the enlargements of Daniel.
The ancient Greek Old Testament known as the Septuagint was the vehicle which conveyed these additional Scriptures into the Catholic Church. The Septuagint version was the Bible of the Greek-speaking, or Hellenist, Jews, whose intellectual and literary centre was Alexandria (see SEPTUAGINT). The oldest extant copies date from the fourth and fifth centuries of our era, and were therefore made by Christian hands; nevertheless scholars generally admit that these faithfully represent the Old Testament as it was current among the Hellenist or Alexandrian Jews in the age immediately preceding Christ. These venerable manuscripts of the Septuagint vary somewhat in their content outside the Palestinian Canon, showing that in Alexandrian-Jewish circles the number of admissible extra books was not sharply determined either by tradition or by authority. However, aside from the absence of Machabees from the Codex Vaticanus (the very oldest copy of the Greek Old Testament), all the entire manuscripts contain all the deutero writings; where the manuscript Septuagints differ from one another, with the exception noted, it is in a certain excess above the deuterocanonical books. It is a significant fact that in all these Alexandrian Bibles the traditional Hebrew order is broken up by the interspersion of the additional literature among the other books, outside the law, thus asserting for the extra writings a substantial equality of rank and privilege.

It is pertinent to ask the motives which impelled the Hellenist Jews to thus, virtually at least, canonize this considerable section of literature, some of it very recent, and depart so radically from the Palestinian tradition. Some would have it that not the Alexandrian, but the Palestinian, Jews departed from the Biblical tradition. The Catholic writers Nickes, Movers, Danko, and more recently Kaulen and Mullen, have advocated the view that originally the Palestinian Canon must have included all the deuterocanonicals, and so stood down to the time of the Apostles (Kaulen, c. 100 B.C.), when, moved by the fact that the Septuagint had become the Old Testament of the Church, it was put under ban by the Jerusalem Scribes, who were actuated moreover (thus especially Kaulen) by hostility to the Hellenistic largeness of spirit and Greek composition of our deuterocanonical books. These exegetes place much reliance on St. Justin Martyr's statement that the Jews had mutilated Holy Writ, a statement that rests on no positive evidence. They adduce the fact that certain deutero books were quoted with veneration, and even in a few cases as Scriptures, by Palestinian or Babylonian doctors; but the private utterances of a few rabbis cannot outweigh the consistent Hebrew tradition of the canon, attested by Josephus--although he himself was inclined to Hellenism--and even by the Alexandrian-Jewish author of IV Esdras. We are therefore forced to admit that the leaders of Alexandrian Judaism showed a notable independence of Jerusalem tradition and authority in permitting the sacred boundaries of the Canon, which certainly had been fixed for the Prophets, to be broken by the insertion of an enlarged Daniel and the Epistle of Baruch. On the assumption that the limits of the Palestinian Hagiographa remained undefined until a relatively late date, there was less bold innovation in the addition of the other books, but the wiping out of the lines of the triple division reveals that the Hellenists were ready to extend the Hebrew Canon, if not establish a new official one of their own.

On their human side these innovations are to be accounted for by the free spirit of the Hellenist Jews. Under the influence of Greek thought they had conceived a broader view of Divine inspiration than that of their Palestinian brethren, and refused to restrict the literary manifestations of the Holy Ghost to a certain terminus of time and the Hebrew form of language. The Book of Wisdom, emphatically Hellenist in character, presents to us Divine wisdom as flowing on from generation to generation and making holy souls and prophets (vii, 27, in the Greek). Philo, a typical Alexandrian-Jewish thinker, has even an exaggerated notion of the diffusion of inspiration (Quis rerum divinarum hæres, 52; ed. Lips., iii, 57; De migratione Abrahæ, 11,299; ed. Lips. ii, 334). But even Philo, while indicating acquaintance with the deutero literature, nowhere cites it in his voluminous writings. True, he does not employ several books of the Hebrew Canon; but there is a natural presumption that if he had regarded the additional works as being quite on the same plane as the others, he would not have failed to quote so stimulating and congenial a production as the Book of Wisdom. Moreover, as has been pointed out by several authorities, the independent spirit of the Hellenists could not have gone so far as to setup a different official Canon from that of Jerusalem, without having left historical traces of such a rupture. So, from the available data we may justly infer that, while the deuterocanonicals were admitted as sacred by the Alexandrian Jews, they possessed a lower degree of sanctity and authority than the longer accepted books, i.e., the Palestinian Hagiographa and the Prophets, themselves inferior to the Law.

II. THE CANON OF THE OLD TESTAMENT IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

The most explicit definition of the Catholic Canon is that given by the Council of Trent, Session IV, 1546. For the Old Testament its catalogue reads as follows:
The five books of Moses (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy), Josue, Judges, Ruth, the four books of Kings, two of Paralipomenon, the first and second of Esdras (which latter is called Nehemias), Tobias, Judith, Esther, Job, the Davidic Psalter (in number one hundred and fifty Psalms), Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Canticle of Canticles, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Isaias, Jeremias, with Baruch, Ezechiel, Daniel, the twelve minor Prophets (Osee, Joel, Amos, Abdias, Jonas, Micheas, Nahum, Habacue, Sophonias, Aggeus, Zacharias, Malachias), two books of Machabees, the first and second.
The order of books copies that of the Council of Florence, 1442, and in its general plan is that of the Septuagint. The divergence of titles from those found in the Protestant versions is due to the fact that the official Latin Vulgate retained the forms of the Septuagint.

A. THE OLD TESTAMENT CANON (INCLUDING THE DEUTEROS) IN THE NEW TESTAMENT

The Tridentine decrees from which the above list is extracted was the first infallible and effectually promulgated pronouncement on the Canon, addressed to the Church Universal. Being dogmatic in its purport, it implies that the Apostles bequeathed the same Canon to the Church, as a part of the depositum fedei. But this was not done by way of any formal decision; we should search the pages of the New Testament in vain for any trace of such action. The larger Canon of the Old Testament passed through the Apostles' hands to the church tacitly, by way of their usage and whole attitude toward its components; an attitude which, for most of the sacred writings of the Old Testament, reveals itself in the New, and for the rest, must have exhibited itself in oral utterances, or at least in tacit approval of the special reverence of the faithful. Reasoning backward from the status in which we find the deutero books in the earliest ages of post-Apostolic Christianity, we rightly affirm that such a status points of Apostolic sanction, which in turn must have rested on revelation either by Christ or the Holy Spirit. For the deuterocanonicals at least, we needs must have recourse to this legitimate prescriptive argument, owing to the complexity and inadequacy of the New Testament data.

All the books of the Hebrew Old Testament are cited in the New except those which have been aptly called the Antilegomena of the Old Testament, viz., Esther, Ecclesiastes, and Canticles; moreover Esdras and Nehemias are not employed. The admitted absence of any explicit citation of the deutero writings does not therefore prove that they were regarded as inferior to the above-mentioned works in the eyes of New Testament personages and authors. The deutero literature was in general unsuited to their purposes, and some consideration should be given to the fact that even at its Alexandrian home it was not quoted by Jewish writers, as we saw in the case of Philo. The negative argument drawn from the non-citation of the deuterocanonicals in the New Testament is especially minimized by the indirect use made of them by the same Testament. This takes the form of allusions and reminiscences, and shows unquestionably that the Apostles and Evangelists were acquainted with the Alexandrian increment, regarded its books as at least respectable sources, and wrote more or less under its influence. A comparison of Hebrews, xi and II Machabees, vi and vii reveals unmistakable references in the former to the heroism of the martyrs glorified in the latter. There are close affinities of thought, and in some cases also of language, between I Peter, i, 6, 7, and Wisdom, iii, 5, 6; Hebrews, i, 3, and Wisdom, vii, 26, 27; I Corinthians, x, 9, 10, and Judith, viii, 24-25; I Corinthians, vi, 13, and Ecclesiasticus, xxxvi, 20.

Yet the force of the direct and indirect employment of Old Testament writings by the New is slightly impaired by the disconcerting truth that at least one of the New Testament authors, St. Jude, quotes explicitly from the "Book of Henoch", long universally recognized as apocryphal, see verse 14, while in verse 9 he borrows from another apocryphal narrative, the "Assumption of Moses". The New Testament quotations from the Old are in general characterized by a freedom and elasticity regarding manner and source which further ten to diminish their weight as proofs of canonicity. But so far as concerns the great majority of the Palestinian Hagiographa--a fortiori, the Pentateuch and Prophets--whatever want of conclusiveness there may be in the New Testament, evidence of their canonical standing is abundantly supplemented from Jewish sources alone, in the series of witnesses beginning with the Mishnah and running back through Josephus and Philo to the translation of the above books for the Hellenist Greeks. But for the deuterocanonical literature, only the last testimony speaks as a Jewish confirmation. However, there are signs that the Greek version was not deemed by its readers as a closed Bible of definite sacredness in all its parts, but that its somewhat variable contents shaded off in the eyes of the Hellenists from the eminently sacred Law down to works of questionable divinity, such as III Machabees.
This factor should be considered in weighing a certain argument. A large number of Catholic authorities see a canonization of the deuteros in a supposed wholesale adoption and approval, by the Apostles, of the Greek, and therefore larger, Old Testament The argument is not without a certain force; the New Testament undoubtedly shows a preference for the Septuagint; out of the 350 texts from the Old Testament, 300 favour the language of the Greek version rather than that of the Hebrew. But there are considerations which bid us hesitate to admit an Apostolic adoption of the Septuagint en bloc. As remarked above, there are cogent reasons for believing that it was not a fixed quantity at the time. The existing oldest representative manuscripts are not entirely identical in the books they contain. Moreover, it should be remembered that at the beginning of our era, and for some time later, complete sets of any such voluminous collection as the Septuagint in manuscript would be extremely rare; the version must have been current in separate books or groups of books, a condition favourable to a certain variability of compass. So neither a fluctuating Septuagint nor an inexplicit New Testament conveys to us the exact extension of the pre-Christian Bible transmitted by the Apostles to the Primitive Church. It is more tenable to conclude to a selective process under the guidance of the Holy Ghost, and a process completed so late in Apostolic times that the New Testament fails to reflect its mature result regarding either the number or note of sanctity of the extra-Palestinian books admitted. To historically learn the Apostolic Canon of the Old Testament we must interrogate less sacred but later documents, expressing more explicitly the belief of the first ages of Christianity.

B. THE CANON OF THE OLD TESTAMENT IN THE CHURCH OF THE FIRST THREE CENTURIES

The sub-Apostolic writings of Clement, Polycarp, the author of the Epistle of Barnabas, of the pseudo-Clementine homilies, and the "Shepherd" of Hermas, contain implicit quotations from or allusions to all the deuterocanonicals except Baruch (which anciently was often united with Jeremias) and I Machabess and the additions to David. No unfavourable argument can be drawn from the loose, implicit character of these citations, since these Apostolic Fathers quote the protocanonical Scriptures in precisely the same manner.
Coming down to the next age, that of the apologists, we find Baruch cited by Athenagoras as a prophet. St. Justin Martyr is the first to note that the Church has a set of Old Testament Scriptures different from the Jews', and also the earliest to intimate the principle proclaimed by later writers, namely, the self-sufficiency of the Church in establishing the Canon; its independence of the Synagogue in this respect. The full realization of this truth came slowly, at least in the Orient, where there are indications that in certain quarters the spell of Palestinian-Jewish tradition was not fully cast off for some time. St. Melito, Bishop of Sardis (c. 170), first drew up a list of the canonical books of the Old Testament While maintaining the familiar arrangement of the Septuagint, he says that he verified his catalogue by inquiry among Jews; Jewry by that time had everywhere discarded the Alexandrian books, and Melito's Canon consists exclusively of the protocanonicals minus Esther. It should be noticed, however, that the document to which this catalogue was prefixed is capable of being understood as having an anti-Jewish polemical purpose, in which case Melito's restricted canon is explicable on another ground. St. Irenæus, always a witness of the first rank, on account of his broad acquaintance with ecclesiastical tradition, vouches that Baruch was deemed on the same footing as Jeremias, and that the narratives of Susanna and Bel and the Dragon were ascribed to Daniel. The Alexandrian tradition is represented by the weighty authority of Origen. Influenced, doubtless, by the Alexandrian-Jewish usage of acknowledging in practice the extra writings as sacred while theoretically holding to the narrower Canon of Palestine, his catalogue of the Old Testament Scriptures contains only the protocanonical books, though it follows the order of the Septuagint. Nevertheless Origen employs all the deuterocanonicals as Divine Scriptures, and in his letter of Julius Africanus defends the sacredness of Tobias, Judith, and the fragments of Daniel, at the same time implicitly asserting the autonomy of the Church in fixing the Canon (see references in Cornely). In his Hexaplar edition of the Old Testament all the deuteros find a place. The sixth-century Biblical manuscript known as the "Codex Claromontanus" contains a catalogue to which both Harnack and Zahn assign an Alexandrian origin, about contemporary with Origen. At any rate it dates from the period under examination and comprises all the deuterocanonical books, with IV Machabees besides. St. Hippolytus (d. 236) may fairly be considered as representing the primitive Roman tradition. He comments on the Susanna chapter, often quotes Wisdom as the work of Solomon, and employs as Sacred Scripture Baruch and the Machabees. For the West African Church the larger canon has two strong witnesses in Tertullian and St. Cyprian. All the deuteros except Tobias, Judith, and the addition to Esther, are Biblically used in the works of these Fathers. (With regard to the employment of apocryphal writings in this age see under APOCRYPHA.)

C. THE CANON OF THE OLD TESTAMENT DURING THE FOURTH, AND FIRST HALF OF THE FIFTH, CENTURY

In this period the position of the deuterocanonical literature is no longer as secure as in the primitive age. The doubts which arose should be attributed largely to a reaction against the apocryphal or pseudo-Biblical writings with which the East especially had been flooded by heretical and other writers. Negatively, the situation became possible through the absence of any Apostolic or ecclesiastical definition of the Canon. The definite and inalterable determination of the sacred sources, like that of all Catholic doctrines, was in the Divine economy left to gradually work itself out under the stimulus of questions and opposition. Alexandria, with its elastic Scriptures, had from the beginning been a congenial field for apocryphal literature, and St. Athanasius, the vigilant pastor of that flock, to protect it against the pernicious influence, drew up a catalogue of books with the values to be attached to each. First, the strict canon and authoritative source of truth is the Jewish Old Testament, Esther excepted. Besides, there are certain books which the Fathers had appointed to be read to catechumens for edification and instruction; these are the Wisdom of Solomon, the Wisdom of Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), Esther, Judith, Tobias, the Didache, or Doctrine of the Apostles, the Shepherd of Hermas. All others are apocrypha and the inventions of heretics (Festal Epistle for 367). Following the precedent of Origen and the Alexandrian tradition, the saintly doctor recognized no other formal canon of the Old Testament than the Hebrew one; but also, faithful to the same tradition, he practically admitted the deutero books to a Scriptural dignity, as is evident from his general usage. At Jerusalem there was a renascence, perhaps a survival, of Jewish ideas, the tendency there being distinctly unfavourable to the deuteros. St. Cyril of that see, while vindicating for the Church the right to fix the Canon, places them among the apocrypha and forbids all books to be read privately which are not read in the churches. In Antioch and Syria the attitude was more favourable. St. Epiphanius shows hesitation about the rank of the deuteros; he esteemed them, but they had not the same place as the Hebrew books in his regard. The historian Eusebius attests the widespread doubts in his time; he classes them as antilegomena, or disputed writings, and, like Athanasius, places them in a class intermediate between the books received by all and the apocrypha. The 59th (or 60th) canon of the provincial Council of Laodicea (the authenticity of which however is contested) gives a catalogue of the Scriptures entirely in accord with the ideas of St. Cyril of Jerusalem. On the other hand, the Oriental versions and Greek manuscripts of the period are more liberal; the extant ones have all the deuterocanonicals and, in some cases, certain apocrypha.

The influence of Origen's and Athanasius's restricted canon naturally spread to the West. St. Hilary of Poitiers and Rufinus followed their footsteps, excluding the deuteros from canonical rank in theory, but admitting them in practice. The latter styles them "ecclesiastical" books, but in authority unequal to the other Scriptures. St. Jerome cast his weighty suffrage on the side unfavourable to the disputed books. In appreciating his attitude we must remember that Jerome lived long in Palestine, in an environment where everything outside the Jewish Canon was suspect, and that, moreover, he had an excessive veneration for the Hebrew text, the Hebraica veritas as he called it. In his famous "Prologus Galeatus", or Preface to his translation of Samuel and Kings, he declares that everything not Hebrew should be classed with the apocrypha, and explicitly says that Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Tobias, and Judith are not on the Canon. These books, he adds, are read in the churches for the edification of the people, and not for the confirmation of revealed doctrine. An analysis of Jerome's expressions on the deuterocanonicals, in various letters and prefaces, yields the following results: first, he strongly doubted their inspiration; secondly, the fact that he occasionally quotes them, and translated some of them as a concession to ecclesiastical tradition, is an involuntary testimony on his part to the high standing these writings enjoyed in the Church at large, and to the strength of the practical tradition which prescribed their readings in public worship. Obviously, the inferior rank to which the deuteros were relegated by authorities like Origen, Athanasius, and Jerome, was due to too rigid a conception of canonicity, one demanding that a book, to be entitled to this supreme dignity, must be received by all, must have the sanction of Jewish antiquity, and must moreover be adapted not only to edification, but also to the "confirmation of the doctrine of the Church", to borrow Jerome's phrase.

But while eminent scholars and theorists were thus depreciating the additional writings, the official attitude of the Latin Church, always favourable to them, kept the majestic tenor of its way. Two documents of capital importance in the history of the canon constitute the first formal utterance of papal authority on the subject. The first is the so-called "Decretal of Gelasius", de recipiendis et non recipiendis libris, the essential part of which is now generally attributed to a synod convoked by Pope Damasus in the year 382. The other is the Canon of Innocent I, sent in 405 to a Gallican bishop in answer to an inquiry. Both contain all the deuterocanonicals, without any distinction, and are identical with the catalogue of Trent. The African Church, always a staunch supporter of the contested books, found itself in entire accord with Rome on this question. Its ancient version, the Vetus Latina (less correctly the Itala), had admitted all the Old Testament Scriptures. St. Augustine seems to theoretically recognize degrees of inspiration; in practice he employs protos and deuteros without any discrimination whatsoever. Moreover in his "De Doctrinâ Christianâ" he enumerates the components of the complete Old Testament. The Synod of Hippo (393) and the three of Carthage (393, 397, and 419), in which, doubtless, Augustine was the leading spirit, found it necessary to deal explicitly with the question of the Canon, and drew up identical lists from which no sacred books are excluded. These councils base their canon on tradition and liturgical usage. For the Spanish Church valuable testimony is found in the work of the heretic Priscillian, "Liber de Fide et Apocryphis"; it supposes a sharp line existing between canonical and uncanonical works, and that the Canon takes in all the deuteros.

D. THE CANON OF THE OLD TESTAMENT FROM THE MIDDLE OF THE FIFTH TO THE CLOSE OF THE SEVENTH CENTURY

This period exhibits a curious exchange of opinions between the West and the East, while ecclesiastical usage remained unchanged, at least in the Latin Church. During this intermediate age the use of St. Jerome's new version of the Old Testament (the Vulgate) became widespread in the Occident. With its text went Jerome's prefaces disparaging the deuterocanonicals, and under the influence of his authority the West began to distrust these and to show the first symptoms of a current hostile to their canonicity. On the other hand, the Oriental Church imported a Western authority which had canonized the disputed books, viz., the decree of Carthage, and from this time there is an increasing tendency among the Greeks to place the deuteros on the same level with the others--a tendency, however, due more to forgetfulness of the old distinction than to deference to the Council of Carthage.

E. THE CANON OF THE OLD TESTAMENT DURING THE MIDDLE AGES

The Greek Church
The result of this tendency among the Greeks was that about the beginning of the twelfth century they possessed a canon identical with that of the Latins, except that it took in the apocryphal III Machabees. That all the deuteros were liturgically recognized in the Greek Church at the era of the schism in the ninth century, is indicated by the "Syntagma Canonum" of Photius.

The Latin Church

In the Latin Church, all through the Middle Ages we find evidence of hesitation about the character of the deuterocanonicals. There is a current friendly to them, another one distinctly unfavourable to their authority and sacredness, while wavering between the two are a number of writers whose veneration for these books is tempered by some perplexity as to their exact standing, and among those we note St. Thomas Aquinas. Few are found to unequivocally acknowledge their canonicity. The prevailing attitude of Western medieval authors is substantially that of the Greek Fathers. The chief cause of this phenomenon in the West is to be sought in the influence, direct and indirect, of St. Jerome's depreciating Prologus. The compilatory "Glossa Ordinaria" was widely read and highly esteemed as a treasury of sacred learning during the Middle Ages; it embodied the prefaces in which the Doctor of Bethlehem had written in terms derogatory to the deuteros, and thus perpetuated and diffused his unfriendly opinion. And yet these doubts must be regarded as more or less academic. The countless manuscript copies of the Vulgate produced by these ages, with a slight, probably accidental, exception, uniformly embrace the complete Old Testament Ecclesiastical usage and Roman tradition held firmly to the canonical equality of all parts of the Old Testament There is no lack of evidence that during this long period the deuteros were read in the churches of Western Christendom. As to Roman authority, the catalogue of Innocent I appears in the collection of ecclesiastical canons sent by Pope Adrian I to Charlemagne, and adopted in 802 as the law of the Church in the Frankish Empire; Nicholas I, writing in 865 to the bishops of France, appeals to the same decree of Innocent as the ground on which all the sacred books are to be received.

F. THE CANON OF THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE GENERAL COUNCILS
The Council of Florence (1442)
In 1442, during the life, and with the approval, of this Council, Eugenius IV issued several Bulls, or decrees, with a view to restore the Oriental schismatic bodies to communion with Rome, and according to the common teaching of theologians these documents are infallible states of doctrine. The "Decretum pro Jacobitis" contains a complete list of the books received by the Church as inspired, but omits, perhaps advisedly, the terms canon and canonical. The Council of Florence therefore taught the inspiration of all the Scriptures, but did not formally pass on their canonicity.

The Council of Trent's Definition of the Canon (1546)

It was the exigencies of controversy that first led Luther to draw a sharp line between the books of the Hebrew Canon and the Alexandrian writings. In his disputation with Eck at Leipzig, in 1519, when his opponent urged the well-known text from II Machabees in proof of the doctrine of purgatory, Luther replied that the passage had no binding authority since the books was outside the Canon. In the first edition of Luther's Bible, 1534, the deuteros were relegated, as apocrypha, to a separate place between the two Testaments. To meet this radical departure of the Protestants, and as well define clearly the inspired sources from which the Catholic Faith draws its defence, the Council of Trent among its first acts solemnly declared as "sacred and canonical" all the books of the Old and New Testaments "with all their parts as they have been used to be read in the churches, and as found in the ancient vulgate edition". During the deliberations of the Council there never was any real question as to the reception of all the traditional Scripture. Neither--and this is remarkable--in the proceedings is there manifest any serious doubt of the canonicity of the disputed writings. In the mind of the Tridentine Fathers they had been virtually canonized, by the same decree of Florence, and the same Fathers felt especially bound by the action of the preceding ecumenical synod. The Council of Trent did not enter into an examination of the fluctuations in the history of the Canon. Neither did it trouble itself about questions of authorship or character of contents. True to the practical genius of the Latin Church, it based its decision on immemorial tradition as manifested in the decrees of previous councils and popes, and liturgical reading, relying on traditional teaching and usage to determine a question of tradition. The Tridentine catalogue has been given above.
The Vatican Council (1870)

The great constructive Synod of Trent had put the sacredness and canonicity of the whole traditional Bible forever beyond the permissibility of doubt on the part of Catholics. By implication it had defined that Bible's plenary inspiration also. The Vatican Council took occasion of a recent error on inspiration to remove any lingering shadow of uncertainty on this head; it formally ratified the action of Trent and explicitly defined the Divine inspiration of all the books with their parts.”






Next I want to address the famous anathema of the council. First, these do not and will never apply to you as a Baptist. You grew up and were taught the Baptist faith and cannot be expected to understand of hold to the Catholic faith. The point is that you search out and seek truth through your whole life. God isn’t going to say “I’m sorry Chris you didn’t accept the Latin Vulgate, off to hell you go packing.” Of course not and the Church does not intend to teach this. This is why it is much better for someone such as you to study the Church teachings through the Catechism of the Catholic Church (I will also send you a hard copy for free). The words of Trent were written to a specific set of people who were breaking ties with the Church of Christ. I will go further in depth on the council of Trent on a later email if you choose to continue dialogue, but for now this email is already getting long and we haven’t addressed the most important point you make.




Very quickly – The Church is infallible in matters of faith and morals. Dei Verbum of the Second Vatican Council lays out a proper understanding of Divine Revelation and the role of the Church in interpreting the scriptures for “no interpretation of scripture is of private revelation”.

Also quickly – infant baptism doesn’t make sense if baptism is only a symbol, however it makes complete sense if baptism is not merely a symbol. We have a “New Covenant” not a “New Contract” with God. Remember that Luther did not reject infant baptism. In fact, Lutherans, Anglicans, Orthodox, and many other Protestants fully accept covenantal theology. It is only when Zwingli founded the new faith of the Anabaptists did covenantal theology become unacceptable.

The most important point you address though is faith alone. There is far too much to this topic to write in a single email. The authoritative book “Not by Faith Alone” by Robert Sungenis goes on for nearly 800 pages looking at all of the scriptural evidence for the Catholic Doctrine of Justification. Here are a few points:

· The Bible is completely absent of the doctrine of “Faith Alone”. The only time “faith alone” is used is in James when the author states that we are not saved by faith alone.
· Fundamentalists assume that to deny faith alone is to embrace a works salvation. Works salvation was rejected thousands of years ago by the Catholic Church. Pelagianism and semi-pelagianism is heresy. Grace cannot be earned. If we go to God and say “God I did so much work and demand to be repaid with heaven” we go to hell.
· Catholics teach that we ‘merit’ grace. However it is crucial to make the distinction that they do not teach we strictly merit grace. The easiest way to understand it is that we cooperate with grace. We must either say yes or no to the Gospel. We must either pick up our cross and follow Christ or reject Christ. We must choose to either “do to the least of these” and thus do unto Christ, or not to. Jesus Christ taught that those who simply cry to Him “Lord, Lord” would, like the demons who believed in Him, go to hell.
· The Lutheran concept of grace that we are “snow covered dung heaps” and incapable of any good fruits is erroneous. Man is not totally depraved. He is made good and bears the stain of original sin after the fall. In baptism he does not simply “wear Christ”, instead he cooperates with grace and his soul is cleansed of original sin. He does no work to see that this is accomplished but instead submits himself to God.
· Catholics believe that we have been saved, that we are being saved, and that we will be saved. To be saved is to be liberated from evil. This happens first through our baptism, then through our whole life as we “work out our salvation in fear and trembling” sanctifying ourselves against sin, and then finally when we enter with glorified bodies into heaven.

Here is an online article on the truth of salvation:

"Therefore my beloved, ... work out your own salvation with fear and trembling" (Philippians 2:12)
Paul was writing to people who were already "saved." They had accepted Jesus Christ, and yet Paul writes "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling." Paul himself was not certain about his own salvation. He said, "But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified." (1 Corinthians 9:27)
Just before that he compares life to a race. He said to run in such a way that you obtain the prize. Thus the prize, salvation, is achieved, not by one decision, but by running the race, or keeping up the effort until the race is over. However, Paul was not certain about his own salvation. He hoped for it. "Through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God." (Romans 5:2)
"For we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still hope for what he sees?" (Romans 8:24)
Paul warns against complacency. "Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall." (1 Corinthians 10:12)
Peter writes to people who have accepted Jesus Christ, and this is what he says about those who came to know Jesus and then go back to worldly ways again: "For if, after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the latter end is worse for them than the beginning. For it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered to them." (2 Peter 2:20-21)
"Therefore consider the goodness and severity of God: on those who fell, severity; but towards you, goodness, if you continue in His goodness. Otherwise you also will be cut off." (Romans 11:22)
If the people to whom they were writing were already saved, then Peter would not have written that it would have been better for some not to have known the way of righteousness than to have turned away from it. In other words, Peter did not accept the idea of being saved just by accepting Jesus as their personal Savior and that was all that was needed. Paul wrote the same idea to the Romans.
Paul tells the Corinthians that they should judge nothing before the time, but that the Lord will praise each one when He comes. "But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by a human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself. For I know of nothing against myself, yet I am not justified by this; but He who judges me is the Lord. Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord comes, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness and reveal the counsels of the hearts. Then each one's praise will come from God.(1 Corinthians 4:3-5)
So we cannot judge ourselves as saved - the Lord is the One who does that.
Who will be saved?
Jesus gives the answer, and so does Paul. "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven." (Matthew 7:21)
"(God) who will render to each one according to his deeds." (Romans 2:6)
"For we must appear before the judgment seat of Christ that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad." (2 Corinthians 5:10)
How will one be saved?
"And you will be hated by all for My name's sake. But he who endures to the end will be saved."(Matthew 10:22)
"And you will be hated by all for My name's sake. But he who endures to the end shall be saved." (Mark 13:13)
"But he who endures to the end shall be saved." (Matthew 24:13)
"But Jesus said to him, 'No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God'." (Luke 9:62)
So, in order to be saved we must keep working at it. It is not a one-shot deal. In Matthew 25, we find that Jesus is advising us to be always ready for His coming. Some say that once they have accepted Christ as their personal Savior they can lead any kind of life they want - good or bad - and they are still saved. Here is what the Letter to the Hebrews says: "For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, to renew them again to repentance, since they crucify again for themselves the Son of God, and put Him to an open shame." (Hebrews 6:4-6)
What is involved in being saved?
1. According to the Word of God, to be saved does not involve just one element like "accept Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior." To be saved involves a process.
2. According to the Word of God, there are five elements involved in being saved:
a. Repent of one's sins.
b. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
c. Be baptized.
d. Receive the Holy Spirit.
e. Do the Will of the Father - a lifelong process. "... (they) said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, 'Men and brethren, what shall we do?' Then Peter said to them, 'Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.'" (Acts 2:37-38)
Peter left out belief in Jesus Christ since he was talking to people who already believed in Jesus Christ. That day, the day the Holy Spirit descended upon the Apostles and Mary, about 3000 were baptized. Jesus, in Matthew 7:21, says that he who does the Will of His Father will enter the kingdom of heaven.
The Catholic Church teaches that a person is saved if there is no mortal sin on their soul at the time of their death. The Church takes into account:
1. What the Word of God says, and
2. The fact that God has given us the gift of Free Will by which we can choose good or evil at any time during our life - we are free, we are never locked into being "saved" or "unsaved" - we work out our salvation with fear and trembling [Philippians 2:12], and hope we will endure to the end [Matthew 10:22].
So when we are asked "Have you been saved?", What do we say?
We can say...
"I have been saved,"
"I am being saved,"
"I hope to be saved."
To explain further:
1. "I have been saved." It is a fact that Jesus Christ died on the cross and rose from the dead in order for us to get to heaven. Jesus Christ has redeemed the world and has done his part to save the world.
2. "I am being saved." We are still, like Paul [1 Corinthians 9:24-27] running the race to achieve our salvation. Jesus is working in our life.
3. "I hope to be saved." We must keep working at our faith in God, our love of God, and doing the Will of God until we die. We hope that God will give us the grace to choose whatever will help us on the road to heaven. In this way, "I hope to be saved." As Paul writes, "... I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; not one thing I do, forgetting those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 3:11-14)
For Paul, salvation is an ongoing process which we continually work on. “




All that said, Teresa certainly knows what she got herself into. She studied right along with me. The Bible comes alive nowhere else like it does in the Catholic Church. For she wrote, compiled, and gave to heaven many martyrs in protecting the scriptures. She for centuries read the scriptures aloud daily as she does today for those who were illiterate and before this century almost all Christians were. You ask Teresa if she knows what she got into, but I ask you if you know truly where you are at today in salvation history. Search your heart and ask yourself if 12,000 denominations is what Christ meant when he prayed for unity in John 17. If not, did Christ found your Church? Can you find your beliefs anywhere in the first 1500 years of Christianity? Can you trace your church to Jesus Christ himself?

His Servant,
Adam

[MC Just]

you totally rock:)

[homeschoolmom]

[quote name='Brother Adam' date='Mar 29 2005, 05:21 PM'] Don't think I'm
judging you, I just want you to know what you've
gotten yourself into.
[/quote]
Yeah, in case you didn't know...

[God Conquers]

Great email Adam!

haha.. I like the part where you said it won't be long-winded!!!!!

[Brother Adam]

haha. Yeah, what can I say. But this guy is studing to be a pastor so all of this should be of relative ease.

[jasJis]

Wouldn't it have been easier to just forward his e-mail with his addy to IronMonk?

Edited March 30, 2005 by jasJis

[God Conquers]

HAHAHAHA!!!

[Dave]

Adam is awesome!!!

[MichaelFilo]

It's good to go that far. That is what apologetics is all about. Thank you Adam for studying and being so knowledgable about it all. It's a good job and you seem to have answered your friend in a way that is caring to him as he seems to care for you.

God bless,
Mikey

[Fides_et_Ratio]

Is that the Cedarville in Ohio? A lot of my (former) "friends" from high school go there now, and now they're twice as "worried about [my] being Catholic"... so much so that when I changed my e-mail, I didn't tell them. I think they must teach a class on Catholicism (or their version of it, anyhow).

[Thy Geekdom Come]

Hehe...don't ever debate systematic theology with Adam.

Mystical theology, on the other hand...

[Brother Adam]

[quote name='Fides_et_Ratio' date='Mar 30 2005, 04:31 PM'] Is that the Cedarville in Ohio? A lot of my (former) "friends" from high school go there now, and now they're twice as "worried about [my] being Catholic"... so much so that when I changed my e-mail, I didn't tell them. I think they must teach a class on Catholicism (or their version of it, anyhow). [/quote]
Yes, near Dayton. I feel for you if you have friends that go there. They are very subtle about their approach to anti-Catholicism unlike Bob Jones or Liberty, but at the same time there is a greater depth to their knowledge. They come out knowing how to use the early Church in their favor, though out of context. As far as I know they do not teach a class on Catholicism. It is intrinsic in their theology as a protest to Catholic theology.

[Brother Adam]

" Hehe...don't ever debate systematic theology with Adam."

Maybe. There are many people who could probably do a decent job of backing me into a corner such as James White. I'm still pretty early on in my studies though. What I do God does through me though. Glory to Him.

[kateri05]

holy cow.

amen is all i have to say!

can you convert my husband for me? nah, jk, Mary is taking care of him!

[Gal. 5:22,23]

[quote name='Brother Adam' date='Mar 30 2005, 05:46 PM'] Yes, near Dayton. I feel for you if you have friends that go there. They are very subtle about their approach to anti-Catholicism unlike Bob Jones or Liberty, but at the same time there is a greater depth to their knowledge. They come out knowing how to use the early Church in their favor, though out of context. As far as I know they do not teach a class on Catholicism. It is intrinsic in their theology as a protest to Catholic theology. [/quote]
I have two neices attending Cederville. My sister-in-law is a graduate. They are 5 pt. Calvinists - not a lot of warm fuzzies...