…But I do have reasons for thinking that Catholics are taught by their leadership to lessen the authority of the Bible; to denigrate it to the point where it does not have the authority that God intended it to have in the Church; and God did intend that the Bible have FULL unhindered authority in His Church; and in His people. There are so many places where "the [Catholic] Church can be shown to minimize the Bible’s authority:
P101, it would be hard to denigrate something that did not hold that position to begin with. The plain fact is that the Bible nowhere claims to have the authority that you assert it does. That belief is a new wind of doctrine of men dating from a mere 500 years ago. It is unscriptural, and the fundamental error upon which a great many other modern post-reformation errors are based upon.
Papal Rome Against The Bible
Steve Wohlberg takes statements from councils out of context from both their own documents and from historical context as well. The result is that he misrepresents the Catholic Church in this matter. I cannot speak to his motivation, but one wonders since he took the time to do the essential research into the documents to find the quotes he needed to make the specious case to begin with.
In answer to the question about how did people use the Bible in 107 BC:
Before (and after) 107 BC or earlier, we can see how that the Bible itself declares that there was a definite fixed collection of sacred writings, known to us today of course, as the Bible. In tracing the history of the formation of the OT it is helpful to begin with the use of such terms as “the scriptures,” “the holy scriptures” etc., because in the NT these all make it evident that there was a definite, fixed, and authoritative collection of sacred writings among the Jews in and well before the 1st cent. of our era: (Mt 21:42; 22:29; Lk 24:32; Jn 5:39; Acts 17:2, 11; 18:24; Rom 1:2; 2 Ti 3:15).
The problem is that even in Christ’s day the canon of the OT was a matter of debate among the Jews. It still is today. The fact that the scriptures read in the temples in Jesus time were in Greek is a matter of historical record. Greek was the lingua franca of that time. Even among the Jews, who in fact spoke Aramaic among themselves and not Hebrew.
While Catholics like to lay claim to writing the Bible, and how the Bible is actually “Catholic;” all they really did, as did many others, was to affirm in their various Councils what the Bible already states/ed.
Yet the fact is that the Catholic councils were the authority that set the canon we have today. The early discussions all specify the same books and it is a 73 book canon.
Nowhere within the word of God does it anywhere tell us what writings are inspired. It relies on an external authority guided by the promised Holy Spirit.
They were not the “authors” of the Bible; they didn’t write God’s Holy Word!
I beg to differ. St. Paul was very clearly a believer in the Eucharistic Real Presence of Our Lord. (1st Corinthians 10:16-17 and 11:23-30)
The apostles James and John both taught the confession of sins and their remission by clergy. (James 5:16, John 20:21-23, & 1st John 1:9, and even in the Old Testament…Leviticus 5:5-6)
Oh, and the Gospel that was preached by the early church? It’s plainly a Catholic one, look at the message preached on the day of Pentecost under the direct influence of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2:38 and then to St. Paul in Acts 22:16.
Who REALLY Preaches “A Different Gospel”?
They are not in charge of God’s Holy Word, all this is based on the assumptive claim that they are the “true Church,” or “the early Church;” but they are neither.
They are A Church, not THE Church. Catholics are just one of the many Christian denominations striking out for supremacy and authority in the religious world
In someone’s errant opinion perhaps, but I have already shown that this person errs in their beliefs based upon the Word of God.
(Cont’d)
