A canon question for Protestants

[grandfather]

I don’t know how else to say that I don’t believe one can have infallible certainty on this issue. It’s that simple.

But, not having infallible certainty does not mean that one has no certainty at all.

Good grief! This is totally illogical. Having certainty is like being pregnant. You can’t be a little pregnant. You are either certain or uncertain. Your methodolgy, your own words, demonstrate that certainty in faith, in doctrine, is imposible for you. The best you can claim of your doctrine is pretty sure, almost certain, highly probable, if you are not certain that your canon is right.

 

[inthecloud]

don’t know how else to say that I don’t believe one can have infallible certainty on this issue. It’s that simple.

But, not having infallible certainty does not mean that one has no certainty at all.

So one cannot have infallible certainty on wish collection of books you are going to teach doctrine from?

And them that means that means that since you teach doctrine from a infallible collection of books that have been fallibly collected, how do you know the collection is really infallible?

Is the OSAS debate all over again.

 

[Pwrlftr]

So one cannot have infallible certainty on wish collection of books you are going to teach doctrine from?

And them that means that means that since you teach doctrine from a infallible collection of books that have been fallibly collected, how do you know the collection is really infallible?

Is the OSAS debate all over again.

Are you infallible? How do you know your decision to trust the RCC is the correct decision? BTW, I am assuming you are Catholic.

 

[Pwrlftr]

Good grief! This is totally illogical. Having certainty is like being pregnant. You can’t be a little pregnant. You are either certain or uncertain. Your methodolgy, your own words, demonstrate that certainty in faith, in doctrine, is imposible for you. The best you can claim of your doctrine is pretty sure, almost certain, highly probable, if you are not certain that your canon is right.

The best you can claim of your decision to entrust yourself to the RCC is that you are pretty sure, almost certain, etc.

Your position is no different than mine unless of course you are claiming you are infallible.

 

[Pwrlftr]

You did not answer. If Sprouil is right in his view about the undertainty of the canon, how do you have any certainty in doctrine if the sole rule of faith is scripture?

**The dogma was only necessary after Luther challenged what had always been universally accepted by all. ** The Church never dogmatically defined that women can not be priests, until the need arose. That is how dogma happens.

What would you do today if another individual came along and wanted to redo the canon again, based on his personal view of what it should be, as Luther did?

Judging by the context of our discussion your statement above which I put in bold font is about the canon. If I am correct than your above statment is absolutely 100% false. Luther was not the first to reject the the deutero’s, far from it.

 

[inthecloud]

Are you infallible? How do you know your decision to trust the RCC is the correct decision? BTW, I am assuming you are Catholic.

I’m Lapsed, more like deist this times. I see the Bible as a human construction. For me the idea of a purely infalible church or books is hard to swallow. And as a human construction that I want to test to see is really God breathed. I really want to believe, I know that there were Jews long ago there was a OT and there were christians before there were a NT. The OT is a product of Jewish traditions and authority. The NT was a product of early christian traditions and authority. Tradition produces Scripture, Scripture fixes Tradition. The Scripture selected reflect the beliefs of the dominat religious authorities. Power and knowledge fixed a religious discourse.
The idea that despite the well know opinion against most christians for 1500 years thought of those books as sacred and sudently they werent is faith destroying.
Lest see, I do not like the rapture, should I to avoid misusing the books of Revelations take that book from the Bible too? Yes, I’m a new Luther. BTW, Genesis 1 to 11 is against my scientific ideals, but I really like the Bible, so I going to take it out too.
Do you get the idea. By questioning the Canon and not the missuse of it, the Reformation cast doubt in the authority of the whole Bible in wish ironically has casted the last word in faith matters.
And after all I do not see what was wrong with the deuteros in the first place?

 

[grandfather]

The best you can claim of your decision to entrust yourself to the RCC is that you are pretty sure, almost certain, etc.

Your position is no different than mine unless of course you are claiming you are infallible.

I entrust myself to the promises of Christ made to His Church that are recorded in scripture. This Church is infallible if His promises are true. “There is much I would like to tell you, but you can not bear it yet. I will send the Holy Spirit who will lead you into ALL truth. I will be with you until the end of time. I will not leave you orphans. What you bind on earth I will bind in heaven. I give you the keys to the kindgdom. Go into all the nations and teach them everything I have taught you”.

You entrust yourself to your interpretation of scripture or another person’s who has separated Himself in his doctrine from this Church, and from the doctrines of this Church that were taught throughout the ages. The authority of this new doctrine that contradicts the earlier faith of the Church is claimed to be scripture alone. That means there is no authority in the Church to teach or proclaim doctrine as Jesus in scripture directs her to do. All doctrine in this system all has to come from scripture and each person has the authority to read it and interpret it on his own. The group that claims this also says that they are uncertain that the books of the Bible are identified correctly. There may be error in them, meaning that there could be missing books or certain books that should not be listed. They base their doctrine on something that is fallible.

I am not trying to be argumentative or agressive. I seek unity with you and all those who are separated. God bless you.

 

[grandfather]

I’m Lapsed, more like deist this times. I see the Bible as a human construction. For me the idea of a purely infalible church or books is hard to swallow. And as a human construction that I want to test to see is really God breathed. I really want to believe,

What are your options? You can believe. You can refuse to believe. For a time you can sit on the fence and wonder. You have to live and in living make decisions on how you will govern your life which will shape your life. All actions have consequences and shape the future we can not see in some way. You can make them on your own, make you own rules and see how you do, how things turn out. Even those who think they are free thinkers and make their own decisions on things like morals, use information they have been given by their experinece and society. So you have to decide if you will try to go it alone, or follow some religion in spiritual matters you can not see. Best wishes. God bless you.

 

[lintpick1]

And after all I do not see what was wrong with the deuteros in the first place?

The Scripture it contains might be a little too Catholic for some people.

 

[Jerry-Jet]

Believing the canon of scripture as given by the Catholic Church is no different than someone who never saw Jesus believing that one of the disciples was telling the truth about him rising from the dead before any scripture was written.

The church gave us the bible–the bible didn’t give us the church.

If you can’t trust the source or the successors to the source–who can you trust?

 

[grandfather]

Believing the canon of scripture as given by the Catholic Church is no different than someone who never saw Jesus believing that one of the disciples was telling the truth about him rising from the dead before any scripture was written.

The church gave us the bible–the bible didn’t give us the church.

If you can’t trust the source or the successors to the source–who can you trust?

Think about why a modern Protestant has to come up with the fallible of an infallible formula. History says the canon was put together from a few books selected by a council of Catholic bishops out of other possible writings that came from apostolic times. The selection came almost four centuries later, around 396 or so. Some other books almost made it into the Bible. There was discussion on other writings, Barnabas, some apostles, the Didache, Justin Martyr, etc. I have them in my library. They are fascinating, and give great historical and spiritual incite, but they are like reading some great work of a saint, not scripture. Why? Because the Church said so. It took a long time for this council to settle the matter, indicating that the list did not float down from heaven. It was studied and debated and decided.

After the Council and scripture was defined some people went home disappointed. Books they favored did not make it. What happened then? Those books were all but forgotten. There was obedience. They accepted the decision of the Church and did not break unity over any lingering dispute.

If Protestants receive their Bible from the hands of a council of Catholic bishops who came almost four centuries after Christ and who believed doctrines on the sacraments, praying for the dead, praying to saints, Mary, etc., that Luther rejected, and at the same time must claim that these guys got the canon right and their doctrines wrong, that really looks bad. They have to say the Holy Spirit guided these guys who believed false doctrine on the canon and left them to their own fallible devices to go astray on doctrine, despite Jesus promises to the Church on leading us into all truth. They have to say Luther got it doctrinally right based on his interpretation of scripture, and the ancient Church that put together the New Testament got it wrong. How could these men give us a list of books that all doctrine comes from while they believed false doctrine? They had to have been idiots if they could not see what they believed was contradicted by the books they said were inspired by God. Protestants have to reject the doctrines of the Churchmen who gave us the Bible. This is a tough position to defend for a Protestant, so we have the fallible of an infallible concoction.

If you read patristics you know they were not idiots. The early fathers were brilliant, but they must have been too stupid to see that their doctrines and scipture do not agree. It is not theology or scriptural interpretation that says what the Church believed. It is history.

 

[Deacon_Ed_B]

For what its worth, here is my explanation for the difference of the Canons. There were two Jewish Councils that determined which books were authentic. The first was the Alexandrian (or Greek) Canon used by Greek speaking Jews throughout the Mediterranean, including Palestine. This council used six scholars from each of the twelve tribes. Thus the term Septuagint. This selection was completed between the years 250-125 BC. The date is important because this was during the time when what we call the Old Testament was still in actual existence.The Canon they chose included books written in Greek as well as Hebrew, by Jews who were scattered during the diaspora. This is the Canon that the Church Fathers chose to follow in the Council of Hippo in 393 AD in the New Testament period. This was again confirmed in the Council of Carthage in 397 AD; again the New Testament
period in which we exist and are under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
The second Jewish council was the council of Jamnia. It defined the Hebrew Canon and was held circa 89-90 AD by Jewish Rabbis who chose only the books written in Hebrew as those inspired. The important fact to note is that the Old Testament had already come to an end.
It is this Hebrew Canon that was chosen during the Protestant reformation in the 15th Century AD, after 1500 years of Catholic Christian history. This excluded the books of Wisdom, Sirac, Judith, Baruch, Tobit, 1 & 2 Maccabees and parts of Daniel. The rationnal was that this was the most recent determination by Jewish Rabbis. But it was also a rejection of decisions made by the early Church Councils by the reformers.
I hope this can be of help in understanding the differences.
God Bless
Deacon Ed B

 

[unacanta]

I’ve been researching how the New Testament and Old Testament canons were established lately. In my research, I stumbled upon something I have trouble understanding from a Protestant perspective. Catholics won’t have any problem there, but Protestants might.

I don’t know why Protestants feel confident that their New Testament is complete and inspired. When I asked an Anglican pastor about it a few years ago, she said they took it on faith that the Holy Spirit guided the early church fathers in selecting the canon.

The problem, for me, lies in the fact that the early church councils that selected the New Testament canon (Rome, Hippo and Carthage) also claimed that the deuterocanonical books of the Bible were scripture. Protestants would disagree with that claim, putting the deuterocanonical books in the Apocrypha. They see the Council of Jamnia as more reliable for selecting the Old Testament canon.

However, if the early church councils incorrectly declared Apocryphal books to be scripture, it seems to follow that either the Holy Spirit was not leading them, or the fleshly side of humanity (or Satan) interfered with the God’s counsel with regard to their judgments about part of the canon. If the fleshly side of humanity was able to interfere with the fathers’ hearing during those councils, though, then how can we know that the other books they rejected deserved to be rejected and that the New Testament they accepted was truly all God-breathed?

The whole issue of what is canon and what is not has been debated over the centuries. I found the following site bible.org/page.php?page_id=697which I found to be very helpful. Mr. Hampton though no longer with us gave a very fair (or what I think is fair) account of where the various books of the bible came from.

Hope this helps.

Blessings,
Len

P.S. For those who are interested in the English Bible History here is another very informative site:
greatsite.com/timeline-english-bible-history/

 

[inthecloud]

There were two Jewish Councils that determined which books were authentic.

Actually there were not Councils in the Christian sense.
The Jews do love authority and the opinion of respected Shuls (schools) on the Canon.
The Alexandria school that gaves us the Septuagint and the several Palestinian Pharisee dominated schuls that gave us the Masoretic text. Yabné (Jammia) was one of them. But the Pharisees had largely firgured out their version of the canon before Jesus, since Rabbi Hillel after the return from the exile and with the Christian challenge they were not ready to open the canon to new books unless they were books they liked like Daniels and Esther.
That is why when I read in some protestant study Bibles about the so called intertestamentary period I laugh. Do they realize that the huge, 400 hundred (cheated, Daniel really was more recent, so Esther and the Song of Solomon) gap between the OT and the NT is becasue the Pharisees decreed that G-D does not speak in other languaje that Hebrew, that G-D stopped speaking after the return from the exile and that G-D does not speak to Jews in Alexandria and Damascus the same way that he spoke to Jews in Babylon? Do they realize that thas was a power trip of the Pharisees to impose their views on all Jewish sects including the early christians?
Do they realize that if you allow the deuteros in you will get a continous unbroken revelation to Jesus times?

Frankly modern biblical scholarship is for me more important that the opinions of St Melito, St Jerome and others on the canon. They werent aware of the jewish politics of the time and how affected the Bible canon. St Augustine was the only ECFs that correctly saw the politics of the Bible canon.

 

[Pwrlftr]

For what its worth, here is my explanation for the difference of the Canons. There were two Jewish Councils that determined which books were authentic. The first was the Alexandrian (or Greek) Canon used by Greek speaking Jews throughout the Mediterranean, including Palestine. This council used six scholars from each of the twelve tribes. Thus the term Septuagint. This selection was completed between the years 250-125 BC. The date is important because this was during the time when what we call the Old Testament was still in actual existence.The Canon they chose included books written in Greek as well as Hebrew, by Jews who were scattered during the diaspora. This is the Canon that the Church Fathers chose to follow in the Council of Hippo in 393 AD in the New Testament period. This was again confirmed in the Council of Carthage in 397 AD; again the New Testament
period in which we exist and are under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
The second Jewish council was the council of Jamnia. It defined the Hebrew Canon and was held circa 89-90 AD by Jewish Rabbis who chose only the books written in Hebrew as those inspired. The important fact to note is that the Old Testament had already come to an end.
It is this Hebrew Canon that was chosen during the Protestant reformation in the 15th Century AD, after 1500 years of Catholic Christian history. This excluded the books of Wisdom, Sirac, Judith, Baruch, Tobit, 1 & 2 Maccabees and parts of Daniel. The rationnal was that this was the most recent determination by Jewish Rabbis. But it was also a rejection of decisions made by the early Church Councils by the reformers.
I hope this can be of help in understanding the differences.
God Bless
Deacon Ed B

Deacon,

a.) Do we have any extant manuscripts of the “Alexandrian” canon and if we do, what year do they date to? To the best of my knowledge the only extant manuscripts we have of the septuagint are all Christian and date to only the 4th century ad. This is hardly proof of an Alexandrian canon ever existing.

b.) Do any first century or earlier Jews list the contents of the supposed Alexandrian canon for us? In other words, does someone like Josephus or a Philo list which books composed the Alexandrian canon for us?

 

[bogeydogg]

If it was an inerrant collecting of books that occurred, then how come the seven deuterocanonical books were on the lists of the councils that completed the collecting?

Actually I think Sproul fudges here y saying that the OT collecting is uncertain and that the books about which he has the most confidence are those of the NT.

 

[bogeydogg]

Can you rephrase this? Sproul is an interesting character, but I don’t follow what he is saying here…

Sproul is arguing that since the Church is made of men it is capable of error and thus cannot, by definition, be considered to be infallible. The collecting though, according to Sproul, was so guided by the Holy Spirit that no error was made.

BTW, I think this inconsistent too, this is Sproul’s opinion not mine.

 

[bogeydogg]

I’d like to venture an explanation at"self-authenticating."

First I want to say that it’s a silly idea. There is no way anything can authenticate itself. This is synonymous with “Cuz I sez so,” and my five year old doesn’t accept that.

The protestant teachers I have heard who have attempted to explain this have followed a pretty simple line. The reason why the Gospel of Thomas is not in the Canon is the book is a fraud. It was written in the middle to late third century, is obviously gnostic and was in no fashion written by the Apostle Thomas. The Church never accepted the book and still does not. The same goes for the Nag Hammadi scrolls. The Church had, centuries ago, considered and refuted the writings as fraudulent, there was nothing new about them. So the first thing by which books were excluded was that they were obviously self-excluded.

Then books which were then accepted were, and we’re talking NT here see above post about OT, that they had to be Apostolic in origin. They had to pass textual criticism tests, (be authentic be accurate) and have been accepted by the Church all along. Remember here there is an important point of departure for the protestants. They claim the books of the NT were already acknowledged by the Church at large with very little controversy and that those Councils of Bishops which declared Canon were receiving the books rather than declaring them Canon. That is, the Bishops simply acknowledged that some writings were already being treated as Scripture by the faithful. I think this true but it’s a half-truth. While there is little doubt that fom the very first the writings of Paul were accepted as Scripture, or nearly as such, to say that the Bishops did no more than simply acknowledge this is to set aside the seriousness of the Marcion Heresy. While there is no doubt that the Gospel of John was written by John, excepting of course those sceptics who are a little silly, in that the Gospel was written by him while he was at Ephesus and was attested to by Polycarp (his pupil) and Ireneaus (Polycarp’s pupil) to say that it was common knowledge that this Gospel was authentic fails to explain why so many followed Arius.

So, if the book is not obviously fraudulent, is historically accurate , is Apostolic (again this is Tradition as well so go fig), has certain Authorship (Tradition), and is consistent in it’s teaching with Church Doctrine (Tradition) then it is said to be self-authenticating.

So apparently, the protestants argument (and again I am protestant for now) is that a book is self-authenticating if Tradition holds it is authentic.

 

[Pwrlftr]

Actually there were not Councils in the Christian sense.
The Jews do love authority and the opinion of respected Shuls (schools) on the Canon.
The Alexandria school that gaves us the Septuagint and the several Palestinian Pharisee dominated schuls that gave us the Masoretic text. Yabné (Jammia) was one of them. But the Pharisees had largely firgured out their version of the canon before Jesus, since Rabbi Hillel after the return from the exile and with the Christian challenge they were not ready to open the canon to new books unless they were books they liked like Daniels and Esther.
That is why when I read in some protestant study Bibles about the so called intertestamentary period I laugh. Do they realize that the huge, 400 hundred (cheated, Daniel really was more recent, so Esther and the Song of Solomon) gap between the OT and the NT is becasue the Pharisees decreed that G-D does not speak in other languaje that Hebrew, that G-D stopped speaking after the return from the exile and that G-D does not speak to Jews in Alexandria and Damascus the same way that he spoke to Jews in Babylon? Do they realize that thas was a power trip of the Pharisees to impose their views on all Jewish sects including the early christians?
Do they realize that if you allow the deuteros in you will get a continous unbroken revelation to Jesus times?

Frankly modern biblical scholarship is for me more important that the opinions of St Melito, St Jerome and others on the canon. They werent aware of the jewish politics of the time and how affected the Bible canon. St Augustine was the only ECFs that correctly saw the politics of the Bible canon.

I think I asked you this before but didn’t get a clear answer. Do you have any evidence that an Alexandrian canon existed?

If you do:
a.) What manuscripts of the Alexandrian canon are extant today?

b.) When do they date back to?

c.) Does anyone such as a Philo or Josephus (Jewish source) (I know these two didn’t and actually provide some evidence that there never was an Alexandrian canon) list the contents of the Alexandrian canon in a letter? If so, who did and can you provide the source for this letter?

To the best of my knowledge the only extant manuscripts of the septuagint we have are all Christian copies that date to the fourth century ad. So I don’t know of any extant manuscripts of the supposed Alexandrian canon.

Additionaly, while someone like a Philo who lived in Alexandria discussed the canon, he never ever once listed any of the deutero’s and I don’t know of any Jewish source of the time who does.

 

[Deacon_Ed_B]

I do not know if we have actual manuscripts from the Alexandrian Council, or from the Council of Jamnia for that matter. I would imagine that if any are existent, they would be in Vatican archives. Early church records, which do go back to the councils of Hippo and Carthage do exist however, and this information comes from them. i.e., the books deemed inspired. (I HAVE NOT SEEN THESE RECORDS)
Deacon Ed B