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Second of Four One-Minute Questions
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James White Starts
White
You accuse me of misciting Matthew 15:6 and I hope you'll
attempt to clarify that but in Matthew 15:6 we are told that the
Scribes and Pharisees nullified the Word of God for the sake of
the their tradition. My assertion was, this means that this means
the tradition is to be used as the test of anything, even that
which claims to be divine tradition. Now Basil said the
following: "There hearers taught in the Scriptures ought to
test what is said by teachers and accept that which agrees with
the Scriptures but reject that which is foreign." Now if
Scripture is a subset of tradition, how can Christians do as
Christ commanded and as Basil exhorted, that is to test what you
allege is divine tradition? How can I test what you say is divine
tradition?
Matatics
If I understand your question I would say that the Catholic
does it exactly the same way that the Protestant does. In other
words, the Protestant believes in interpreting Scripture by
Scripture, using what we call the Analogy of Faith. In other
words, you make sure that you're not interpreting one passage of
Scripture in a way that is not constant with what is clearly
taught in other passages of Scripture. You do that within the
canon. The Catholic, you might say, simply operates with a larger
canon than the Protestant does. In other words, we accept as our
canon the written tradition, the written Word of God, the oral
tradition, the oral Word of God and also the Church as the
teacher of God's Word. All of these things together make up the
Word of God. And so, I have no problem, I can say for the sake of
argument, absolutely. I don't have any problem with testing
tradition by the Word of God and I can say, as a Catholic, in all
honesty before the Son, before you, there is nothing in the
tradition of the Church, which I believe, as a Catholic, that is
inconsistent with the Word of God.
Jesus criticized the Pharisees in his day for creating a human
tradition--remember, a tradition that was not inspired, that did
not come from inspired men, and saying this uninspired, human
tradition is taking priority over something we know he says is
the inspired Word of God, the commandment to honor your father
and your mother. That is clearly wrong. Honor your father and
your mother involves, part of the connotation of that commandment
is to care for them in their old age and here were Pharisees who
were canceling out their obligation to do so. Here you have Jesus
saying, basically overturning the requirements of the Word of
God.
I would say that if there is anything in the Immaculate
Conception of Mary or in the authority of the Pope or in the real
presence of Christ or anything else that you find problematic
that you can show me a clear verse in the Bible that refutes--and
of course, you can perhaps do that as well tomorrow if you want
to come to the seminars--then you're on analogous grounds. But
there is nothing. There is nothing the Catholic Church teaches in
its tradition that is contrary to Scripture. So your primary
accusation that we're adding to the Bible, adding things that do
not jive with Scripture, I think falls flat to the ground. I
would simply say, that again the burden of proof is on you to
show that if you're going to accuse the Catholic Church of
teaching unbiblical doctrines that you need to show them the
Bible verse which refutes them and then show that your
interpretation of the Bible verse is, in fact, the correct one,
which again, if you're a fallible person of a fallible
denomination, I would think that you'd have to be at least
theoretically open to the possibility that you are
misinterpreting that verse.
White
Well, notice, Gerry, first of all you talk about
infallibility. If the Catholic Church defines the verse, you have
no question or basis on which to question their tradition or
their interpretation because you believe they are infallible.
Therefore, you have no basis upon which to test those traditions
if the Church infallibly pronounces they are true. That's the
final authority for you is the Church. Hence, to say that you can
test that on the basis of Scripture or the canon I think really
begs the question.
Beyond this you were talking about this infallible tradition.
I'll give you an example. Roman Catholics that I know pray to
Michael the Archangel. Now if I test this traditional belief,
because you certainly aren't going to find anything about praying
to Michael the Archangel in the Bible, if I test this traditional
belief by Scripture I discover that prayer in Scripture is a form
of worship, that we are not to worship angels in any way, shape
or form, that there is nowhere in Scripture where praying to
angels is ever allowed, is ever spoken of. No one ever did it. So
if I test that on the basis of Scripture I find it to be wanting,
but when I present that to a Roman Catholic what do I hear back?
" Let's see, it's not the Scripture that decides this. The
Church has decided this. We don't need to find any reference in
the Bible to praying to Michael the Archangel because we don't
need that. We don't draw our faith solely from the Bible. We draw
from wherever else we want to draw it from here over in this oral
tradition." And so when I've shown this to Roman Catholics
the answer has always been, "Well, the Church says the are
different levels of prayer. Well, there are different levels of
worship. You've got hyperdulia, and dulia and latria and all
these others." And when I go, "Well, let's look at
those words in Scripture," they all come from, "Well,
that doesn't matter. The Church says this." So to say that
you can test these things, Gerry, I'm sorry. I can't possibly see
how you can test them in any way, shape or form. I think that
that is actually a denial of the concept of the infallibility of
the Church for you to say that you can test what the Church says.
You can't do that. You're supposed to be fallible and they're not
supposed to be.
Matatics
Well, I would say in my 60 seconds of response that you have
the same problem, epistemologically speaking. I mean, how can
you, as a fallible man, sit in judgment on the Word of God. You
have to do it. If you examine the Scriptures, if you, as a
Protestant, read the Bible to see whether or not it jives with
what the Catholic Church says about asking angels to pray for us,
for example, then aren't you sitting in judgment on the Bible as
well? Aren't you testing the Scriptures to see whether, in fact,
their interpretation jives? Not at all. To listen to the teaching
of the Church or the teaching of the Bible is not to sit in
judgment on it. I think that's a misrepresentation. The Catholic
Church is quite willing to point to Biblical principles that
substantiate and corroborate the legitimacy of approaching our
angels who are spoken of as our fellow servants of God. They are
brothers, in that extended sense. They are Sons of God as we are
and so we are brothers, spiritually speaking. And just as I ask
you, my brother, to pray for me or another brother to pray for me
I can ask my brother angels to pray for me to the Father, too.
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