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Pwrlftr
Guest
Well, let me ask it this way.
Does it mean anything that the books you call deutero’s are quoted?
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Does it mean anything that the books you call deutero’s are quoted?
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ryanoneil
Guest
I was refuting Ginger2’s OP with Post #38, not setting up criteria for books being in the cannon.
Documentation? I got that from the link I provided, but I’m sure that won’t be satifactory. I’ll see if I can find something additional for you.
Peace,
Ryan
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Pwrlftr
Guest
I completely missed the link. If you get a chance over the next day or two and have an interest in finding more information, please post it but if you don’t, no big deal.I was refuting Ginger2’s OP with Post #38, not setting up criteria for books being in the cannon.
Documentation? I got that from the link I provided, but I’m sure that won’t be satifactory. I’ll see if I can find something additional for you.
Peace,
Ryan
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ryanoneil
Guest
Yes. Jesus and the Apostles refered to them in their teaching. As far as them being canonized, I trust the Church Fathers.
Peace,
Ryan
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peary
Guest
Is the Bible self-authenticating? And, how do we determine which books really belong in the Bible? Only confirmed inspired writings? Or some uninspired writings that may in some way benefit Christians?
The Church determines which books really belong in the Bible because the Bible is the Church’s sacred scriptures. To say that the Church does not have authority over its own scriptures, or that it does not possess the authority to interpret its own scriptures is rather ridiculous, actually.
The Church determines which books really belong in the Bible because the Bible is the Church’s sacred scriptures. To say that the Church does not have authority over its own scriptures, or that it does not possess the authority to interpret its own scriptures is rather ridiculous, actually.
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Steadfast
Guest
I don’t have much problem with this until I get to your use of the word “authority”. This is such a tricky idea.
Classical Protestantism admits a custodial responsibility for the Bible to the Church and understands the development of canon pretty much as I’ve tried to explain it earlier in this thread though there are, of course divergences, I wouldn’t presume to speak for everyone.
This is a kind of “authority”, this divinely given competence to promulgate a canon in the first place.
Is this what you mean, or are you saying that the testimony of the Church effectively determines (as in “effects” “causes”) the text’s status as the Word of God?
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mercygate
Guest
Jumping in ahead of peary. For Catholics, “authority” isn’t “tricky” at all. It is a necessity that descends from the divinely promised guidance of the Holy Spirit to the Apostles in John 16:13 and again at the Great Commission: “I am with you to the close of the age.” In both places, only the Eleven were present.
I believe it would be more accurate to say that the Church “recognizes” the canon. It “causes” the canon only in that the canonical books of the New Testament were produced IN and FROM the Church, FOR the Church. The canon was the canon even before it was canonized.
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Steadfast
Guest
Then I rejoice in a pretty darned high degree of concord with your church on this issue.
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jmcrae
Guest
Actually it was when Pope Innnocent I declared them infallibly for the whole Church and ordered Fr. Jerome to translate the final list of 73 books into Latin, and enclose it in a codex (a modern-style book-cover) for the ease of use of the Churches in their liturgies.
When they start teaching it in Sunday School.
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Steadfast
Guest
There is a fair degree of disagreement that this ever happened.
The alternative view is that Jerome only translated 66 books and that the others were added by redactors using existing old Latin texts.
But even if this did happen it hardly constitutes the final, irrevocable and magisterially conclusive establishment of a canon.
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jmcrae
Guest
But the effect is the same - this is the Bible that was copied and then distributed to the Churches, for use in the Liturgy. (The ones that got chained to the ambo, that Protestants accuse us of not allowing people to take home and read.)
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steve_b
Guest
Actually 3 councils, Rome Hippo and Carthage named which books would be accepted. Even though they were local councils, East and West agreed with the conclusion, with exception of III Macabees which the East has in their canon.
I think it also indicates that of the hundreds of books available for reading, and thes were thought to be sacred texts, the Church needed to step in and clear the confusion. So those councils named what books would be sacred.
Pwrl:
Trent was the first ecumenical council to end all debate on the canon
Pwrl:
False. The ordinary teaching of the Church was already in place for more than 1000 years after those 3 earlier councils, using those texts that Trent also named as sacred texts.
What needs to be addressed is that in the 16th century, Luther the father of Protestantism not only removed 7 books from the OT, he also removed James, Jude, Hebrews and Revelations from the NT. He commented that James was an epistle of straw, and the author of the 4th Gospel couldn’t possibly be the author of Revelation therefore, out they went… He ultimately put those NT books back but not after argument. I think this tells us
- some people were going to continually argue and dispute the canon,
- but most importantly, it tells us that sola scriptura was a novel concept introduced in the 16th century. Why novel you may ask?
- In order to absolutize and make a set of books SOLA in one’s theology, one needs to absolutize and define exactly which books one is talking about. And the father of Protestantism wasn’t even sure what those books would be.
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Steadfast
Guest
jm,
No one denies that the canon promulgated at Trent, which made no essential distinction in canonicity between the canon and deuterocanon was ancient and accepted.
What is disputed is that it was always the only choice among scholars.
The picture given is often of the Reformers deciding de novo to relegate the deuteros to an appendix and deny them full canonical status, but that’s a vicious cartoon, the fact is that this was the fruit of an old discussion and debate among scholars.
Before the Reformation Catholic scholars had been questioning the Alexandrian canon and the full inclusion of the OT Deuteros beginning with Jerome and climaxing with Ximines and Erasmus on the very eve of the Reformation.
Until Trent finally and solemnly defined the canon for your communion, scholars were free to question the full canonicity of these texts and had been increasingly actually doing so.
The promulgation at Trent can be seen as either a relieving repristination on the part of the council fathers or a reactionary gambit against a rising new scholarship which the reformation embraced but Rome quashed.
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jmcrae
Guest
Well, there are always debates of one kind or another going on. People of the future will point to popular culture and things like the Jesus Seminar to show that Christians of our time were “in discussions” about the divinity of Jesus Christ.
There is a sense in which that might be true, but you and I firmly believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ, and we aren’t going to be confused by these sort of fringe discussions, that are happening at the outer edges of accepted Christian thought.
In the same way, the ordinary people who lived from the time of St. Jerome until the Council of Trent knew what the Bible consisted of, and weren’t all that bothered by people who thought it was something different than that.
And if some religion were to arise in the near future based on the Jesus Seminar, it, too, wouldn’t be “de novo,” as such, but it would still be outside the mainstream of Christian teaching as handed down from the Apostles through the Church and in the Scriptures.
People are always free to do whatever they want to do. I don’t see the debate slowing down, even today - Trent certainly didn’t stop people from removing the Deuterocanon from their Bibles, if they wanted to do that.
But what Trent did was it reaffirmed what the Church has always taught, and provided an anchor point for the believing faithful - a check point, so that people could look at their Bibles and make sure they were the right ones for use in the Liturgy, and for teaching in Sunday School, etc.
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Steadfast
Guest
A better analogy would be that the idea that the earth was round was not new with Copernicus but had existed as early as the ancient Greeks and despite the efforts of many church fathers to combat the rising tide of geographic science, and despite the continuing opinions of the unlettered, eventually the truth won out.
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jmcrae
Guest
It’s not even related. The Church has never set itself up as a teacher of science. And I don’t recall anyone ever having any problems with Copernicus. (He was a priest.) His observatory at the Vatican is still in active use, even today.A better analogy would be that the idea that the earth was round was not new with Copernicus but had existed as early as the ancient Greeks and despite the efforts of many church fathers to combat the rising tide of geographic science, and despite the continuing opinions of the unlettered, eventually the truth won out.
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Steadfast
Guest
My point is that what is true can be denied and even officially quashed for a long time but the truth will out in the end despite the best efforts of the ignorant to kill it.
You can take this either way.
You can take this either way.
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jmcrae
Guest
I have no idea what you are driving at.
I was trying to compare the modern situation of the Church today with the situation as it existed in the time of the Council of Trent.
I have no idea what questions about astronomy have to do with anything. Scientists (other than Galileo) do not generally consider themselves infallible, so I don’t see how the situations are in any way comparable.
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Pwrlftr
Guest
I disagree.
Folks such as Cardinals Ximenes and Cajetan rejected the apocryphas/deuterocanonical books and they were around at the reformation. Ximenes even had his study bible approved by the pope and he outright rejected the books. Heck even Pope Gregory rejected at least one of the books.
The main study bible of the middle ages (Glossa Ordinaire) clearly rejected the books as canonical.
The New Catholic Encyclopedia this to say, “According to Catholic doctrine, the proximate criterion of the Biblical canon is the infallible decision of the Church. This decision was not given until rather late in the history of the Church (at the Council of Trent). Before that time there was some doubt about the canonicity of certain Biblical books, i.e., about their belonging to the canon.”
Yeah but so what? Catholics such as Ximenes and Erasumus who were contempraries of Luther expressed doubts about books of the NT such as Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, and 3 John, Jude and I do believe Revelations.
Catholics are free to question the canon but Luther isn’t?
Apparently he was sure 'cuz he included the all the books you have in your Bible and only rejected the canonocity of the deutero/apocrypha. When you play the Luther card you have to be careful.
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Mannyfit75
Guest
Are Ximenes and Erasumus councils of the Church? The Church declared those Deutrocanonical inspired, not biships. Take a look at the Council of Hippo, and Carthage. 2/3 of the NT cited books from the Deutrocanonical.
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