Dear Protestant: Where Did You Get Your Bible?

[Peter_J]

The early Church disputed the cononicity of the 4 Gospels. Different groups chose one over the others. St Irenaeus was one of the earliest (if not the first) to contest this.

Right. Do you accept Trent and Carthage? If not who do you believe has the highest authority to decree a different canon?

Me, but I have trouble getting the rest of you to obey me.

 

[rcwitness]

Actually, Trent closed the canon, which allowed no more books to be added. The 73 books for the Roman Catholics was settled at the Council of Rome.

I find a hilarious point of these conversations to be eople who admit that Carthage was binding on the African Church, but cannot admit that the Council of Rome was binding on the Latin Church.

I don’t have a lot of confidence in the Council of Rome records.

 

[rcwitness]

They didn’t necessarily do it or have to do it, it was a defacto standard which was clearly recognized by Jesus and the Apostles because they held each other accountable to the Scriptures. If there was no concept of a Canon before Trent how could that be? Jesus said the Scriptures cannot be broken. How could he assume they knew what Scriptures he was talking about? Paul wrote to Timothy that he knew the Scriptures from childhood which he learned about salvation. There are just too many times in the New Testament before Trent believers were held accountable to the Scriptures if there was no concept of a Canon.

I think you are misunderstanding the significance of the canon, in relation to the Scriptures. No one is contesting what the Scriptures are, or their authority. We merely make a point that determining a canon, no matter who you are or what is in your canon, requires an authority that is God’s personal decision. It can’t be denied or doubted. So whichever canon you use, you have to try to understand how you know that it is God’s rule.

There was no universal concensus in reference to the deuterocanonicals in the New Covenant Church.

But by that standard, how did we determine the New Testament. They were decided before everyone had Universal agreement.

There was always a few books where there was disagreement, but this never put the church in a position of being in mass confusion without this. This is clearly evident that Jesus and the Apostles felt no need to call a council to determine what the canon was.

We don’t claim that there was mass confusion. In fact, we claim it wasn’t necessary, because we don’t rely on Scripture Alone. Though, in a sense, we follow Scripture more accurately, since Scripture assigns authority to the Church and Tradition (Apostolic).

Well if you ask Jerome it was the version in the Protestant bibles. However, I think the more important issue is that the Catholic claim that the Canon was not defined until Trent suffers from 1 of 2 problems. 1. There was no canon, but yet Jesus and the Apostles held the people accountable to the Scriptures without one, which would mean there was no need for an official council. 2. There was a canon which means Trent defining of one was not the determining of the canon, because it was already defined. Of course I’m speaking of the old testament.

Trent didn’t start from scratch. There were still disputes about books, which infiltrated even high clergy. The purpose was to settle once and for all the official judgment.

 

[Duane1966]

I don’t have a lot of confidence in the Council of Rome records.

Why?

 

[rcwitness]

Why?

because we don’t have direct records. And if the decree was original, and from Damasus, Jerome would not have disputed as long as he did.

 

[Duane1966]

because we don’t have direct records. And if the decree was original, and from Damasus, Jerome would not have disputed as long as he did.

Did Jerome dispute? His own words might shock you.

 

[rcwitness]

Did Jerome dispute? His own words might shock you.

Didn’t he debate the dueteros with Augustine?

 

[Duane1966]

Didn’t he debate the dueteros with Augustine?

Here is the problem that I see when reading the ECF’s usage of the term canonical. It quite obviously has a different meaning for them than what it has for us today. Today the word canonical = the entirety of inspired Scripture. For them it is quite obvious that the entirety of inspired Scripture is not contained in the canon of their time. We know this for a fact as almost every ECF that may claim or omit books from the canon, in other places quote from these same books and call them either sacred, or inspired Scripture.

Which brings us to St. Jerome, who said this concerning what he wrote in his preface of Daniel:

But when I repeat what the Jews say against the Story of Susanna and the Hymn of the Three Children, and the fables of Bel and the Dragon, which are not contained in the Hebrew Bible, the man who makes this a charge against me proves himself to be a fool and a slanderer; for I explained not what I thought but what they commonly say against us. I did not reply to their opinion in the Preface, because I was studying brevity, and feared that I should seem to be writing not a Preface but a book. St. Jerome, Apology against Rufinus, Book 2:33, 402 AD, Schaff, NPNF 2, Vol. 3, p. 517.

Now I have seen a person when confronted with this passage say that St. Jerome is lying here. If he is, how do we know that St. Jerome is not lying in his prefaces?

I don’t have a lot of confidence in the Council of Rome records.

The first part of this decree has long been known as the Decree of Damasus, and concerns the Holy Spirit and the seven-fold gifts. The second part of the decree is more familiarly known as the opening part of the Gelasian Decree, in regard to the canon of Scripture: De libris recipiendis vel non recipiendis. It is now commonly held that the part of the Gelasian Decree dealing with the accepted canon of Scripture is an authentic work of the Council of Rome of 382 A.D. and that Gelasius edited it again at the end of the fifth century, adding to it the catalog of the rejected books, the apocrypha. It is now almost universally accepted that these parts one and two of the Decree of Damasus are authentic parts of the Acts of the Council of Rome of 382 A.D. (Jurgens, Faith of the Early Fathers, vol. 1, p. 404)

Now obviously from this passage we can see that some have called the authenticity of this document of the council into question. If this is true, then this would definitely favor the reasoning you give for the way St. Jerome acts in his prefaces. I think that Pope Innocent I letter hinders the reading of this document being a forgery, and in a way clearly points to it:

Which books really are received in the canon, this brief addition shows. These therefore are the things of which you desired to be informed. Five books of Moses, that is, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, and Joshua the son of Nun, and Judges, and the four books of Kings 2 together with Ruth, sixteen books of the Prophets, five books of Solomon, 3 and the Psalms. Also of the historical books, one book of Job, one of Tobit, one of Esther, one of Judith, two of Maccabees, two of Ezra, 4 two of Chronicles. And of the New Testament: of the Gospels four. Epistles of the apostle Paul fourteen. 5 Epistles of John three. Epistles of Peter two. Epistle of Jude. Epistle of James. Acts of the Apostles. John’s Apocalypse. But the rest of the books, which appear under the name of Matthias or of James the Less, or under the name of Peter and John (which were written by a certain Leucius), or under the name of Andrew (which were written by the philosophers Xenocharides and Leonidas), or under the name of Thomas, and whatever others there may be, you should know they are not only to be rejected but also condemned.(Letter to Exsuperius, bishop of Toulouse. (A.D. 405))

Notice he says the canon of the bible was received, but received from whom? Either he is talking about Carthage, but that would not be binding on the Church of Rome, unless confirmed by the pope and made binding on the Roman Church. Nor does he reference Carthage. Or the obvious conclusion, is that Pope Innocent I was referring to the Decree of Damasus.

 

[adamhovey1988]

I think I should make a point that Jerome did say that he accepted to Deturocanonical books but he did say was that the Jews of the time did not. I have seen this argument thrown around so many times and it’s not accurate Jerome did except those books.

 

[worldcitizen]

Because I am new to this I will probably not always grasp what is being said. As a vulnerable person, weak in faith and searching for truth, love, peace, kindness, I just want to say God bless all those who show God’s love in their conversation. Once or twice I have noticed sarcasm, rivalry, against non-Catholics and I would ask those who are tempted to speak in that to please consider that flippant remarks may not seem much, but they can cause a brother or sister to stumble. If we cant be gracious to non-catholics, how will we ever be gracious to our enemies.? I am walking a very thin tightrope in my spiritual journey. How blessed when I hear gentle encouragement, and how destructive when I hear hard and haughty remarks. I hope this os understood as a genuine plea for support, for that’s all it is.

Hi sugarplum. I’m a Bahá’í and I can assure you they treat my religion and Faith with total and complete respect here. The people here are extremely tolerant and I feel welcomed and loved. That’s why I keep coming back!!

 

[dawid]

Hi sugarplum. I’m a Bahá’í and I can assure you they treat my religion and Faith with total and complete respect here. The people here are extremely tolerant and I feel welcomed and loved. That’s why I keep coming back!!

We learn from others’ opinions.
Thanks for offering us the view from your perspective.

 

[Mammoths]

God Inspired the apostles and prophets to write. The people who received their writings preserved them, recognizing them as scripture from the beginning. In the four hundreds AD, Catholic fathers compiled them in a canon including all the books known by those bishops who had the scriptures in their heritage of succession and excluding those books that were known by tradition to be spurious.

 

[Lenten_ashes]

I think I should make a point that Jerome did say that he accepted to Deturocanonical books but he did say was that the Jews of the time did not. I have seen this argument thrown around so many times and it’s not accurate Jerome did except those books.

And his feelings on the “disputed books” changed over time and he started quoting from them in his writings as if they were scripture. The Jerome disputes are over blown.

If the ‘reformation’ would have taken place in the early Church, like 95 AD, the protestant Churches would be relying on the Septuagint just like everybody else of that time was, to include the Jews.

And there are documented cases of Rabbis quoting from the disputed books in the 3rd and 4th centuries. So even after the Jews made the change, it obviously wasn’t unanimous right away

 

[Duane1966]

God Inspired the apostles and prophets to write. The people who received their writings preserved them, recognizing them as scripture from the beginning. In the four hundreds AD, Catholic fathers compiled them in a canon including all the books known by those bishops who had the scriptures in their heritage of succession and excluding those books that were known by tradition to be spurious.

The part that I highlighted is not true. I point you to this portion of Henry Graham’s book, Where We Got the Bible: Our Debt to the Catholic Church, which can be found here: catholicapologetics.info/apologetics/protestantism/wbible.htm#CHAPTER%20IV (I edited for length)

Now we know that the Gospels and Epistles of the New Testament were read aloud to the congregations of Christians that met on the first day of the week for Holy Mass (just as they are still among ourselves), one Gospel here, another there; one Epistle of St Paul in one place, another in another; all scattered about in various parts of the world where there were bodies of Christians. And the next question that naturally occurs to us is, when were these separate works gathered together so as to form a volume, and added to the Old Testament to make up what we now call the Bible? Well, they were not collected for the best part of 300 years…That though we admit that the separate works composing the New Testament were now in existence, yet they were for centuries not to be found altogether in one volume, were not obtainable by multitudes of Christians, and even were altogether unknown to many in different parts of the world. How then, could they possibly form a guide to Heaven and the chart of salvation for those who had never seen or read or known about them?…The Council of Carthage, then, is the first known to us in which we find a clear and undisputed catalogue of all the New Testament books as we have them in Bibles now.

It is true that many Fathers and Doctors and writers of the Church in the first three centuries from time to time mention by name many of the various Gospels and Epistles; and some, as we come nearer 397, even refer to a collection already existing in places. For example, we find Constantine, the first Christian Emperor, after the Council of Nicea, applying to Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea, and a great scholar, to provide fifty copies of the Christian Scriptures for public use in the churches of Constantinople, his new capital. This was in 332 A.D. The contents of these copies are known to us, perhaps (according to some, even probably) one of these very copies of Eusebius’ handiwork has come down to us; **but they are not precisely the same as our New Testament, though very nearly so. Again, we find lists of the books of the New Testament drawn up by St Athanasius, St Jerome, St Augustine, and many other great authorities, as witnessing to what was generally acknowledged as inspired Scripture in their day and generation and country; but I repeat that none of these corresponds perfectly to the collection in the Bible that we possess now; **…

You may ask me, however, what was the difference between the lists of New Testament books found in various countries and different authors before 397, and the catalogue drawn up at the Council of that date?..

There were spurious books floating about ‘in the Christian Church’, without a doubt in the early centuries; this is certain, because we know their very names; and it is precisely in her rejection of these, and in her guarding the collection of inspired writings from being mixed up with them, that we shall now see the great work that the Catholic Church did, under God’s Holy Spirit, for all succeeding generations of Christians, whether within the fold or outside of it. It is through the Roman Catholic Church that Protestants have got their Bible; there is not (to paraphrase some words of Newman) a Protestant that vilifies and condemns the Catholic Church for her treatment of Holy Scripture, but owes it to that Church that he has the Scripture at all…

To be continued…

 

[Duane1966]

part II

(i) Before the collection of New Testament books was finally settled at the Council of Carthage, 397, we find that there were three distinct classes into which the Christian writings were divided. This we know (and every scholar admits it) from the works of early Christian writers like Eusebius, Jerome, Epiphanius, and a whole host of others that we could name. These classes were (I) the books ‘acknowledged’ as Canonical, (2)** books ‘disputed’ or ‘controverted’,**(3) books declared ‘spurious’ or false. Now in class (I) i.e., those acknowledged by Christians everywhere to be genuine and authentic, and to have been written by Apostolic men, we find such books as the Four Gospels, 13 Epistles of St Paul, Acts of the Apostles. These were recognised east and west as ‘Canonical’, genuinely the works of the Apostles and Evangelists whose names they bore, worthy of being in the ‘Canon’ or sacred collection of inspired writings of the Church, and read aloud at Holy Mass. But there was (2) a class—and Protestants should particularly take notice of the fact, as it utterly undermines their Rule of Faith ‘the Bible and the Bible only’—of books that were disputed, controverted, in some places acknowledged, in others rejected; and among these we actually find the Epistle of St James, Epistle of St Jude, 2nd Epistle of St Peter; 2nd and 3rd of St John, Epistle to the Hebrews, and the Apocalypse of St John. There were doubts about these works; perhaps, it was said, they were not really written by Apostles, or Apostolic men, or by the men whose names they carried; in some parts of the Christian world they were suspected, though in others unhesitatingly received as genuine. There is no getting out of this fact, then: some of the books of our Bible which we, Catholic and Protestant alike, now recognise as inspired and as the written Word of God, were at one time, and indeed for long, viewed with suspicion, doubted, disputed, as not possessing the same authority as the others. (I am speaking only of the New Testament books; the same could be proved, if there were space, of the Old Testament; but the New Testament suffices abundantly for the argument.) But further still—what is even more striking, and is equally fatal to the Protestant theory—in this (2) class of ‘controverted’ and doubtful books some were to be found which are not now in our New Testament at all, but which were by many then considered to be inspired and Apostolic, or were actually read at the public worship of the Christians, or were used for instructions to the newly-converted; in short, ranked in some places as equal to the works of St James or St Peter or St Jude. Among these we may mention specially the ‘Shepherd’ of Hermas, Epistle of Barnabas, the Doctrine of the Twelve Apostles, Apostolic Constitutions, Gospel according to the Hebrews, St Paul’s Epistle to the Laodiceans, Epistle of St Clement, and others. Why are these not in our Bible today? We shall see in a minute. Lastly (3) there was a class of books floating about before 397 A.D., which were never acknowledged as of any value in the Church, nor treated as having Apostolic authority, seeing that they were obviously spurious and false, full of absurd fables, superstitions, puerilities, and stories and miracles of Our Lord and His Apostles which made them a laughing-stock to the world. Of these some have survived, and we have them today, to let us see what stamp of writing they were; most have perished. But we know the names of about 50 Gospels (such as the Gospel of James, the Gospel of Thomas, and the like), about 22 Acts (like the Acts of Pilate, Acts of Paul and Thecla, and others), and a smaller number of Epistles and Apocalypses. These were condemned and rejected wholesale as ‘Apocrypha’—that is, false, spurious, uncanonical.

(ii) This then being the state of matters, you can see at once what perplexity arose for the poor Christians in days of persecution, when they were required to surrender their sacred books. The Emperor Diocletian, for example, who inaugurated a terrible war against the Christians, issued an edict in 303 A.D. that all the churches should be razed to the ground and the Sacred Scriptures should be delivered up to the Pagan authorities to be burned. Well, the question was what was Sacred Scripture? If a Christian gave up an inspired writing to the Pagans to save his life, he thereby became an apostate: he denied his faith, he betrayed his Lord and God; he saved his life, indeed, but he lost his soul. Some did this and were called ‘traditores’, traitors, betrayers, ‘deliverers up’ (of the Scriptures). Most, however, preferred martyrdom, and refusing to surrender the inspired writings, suffered the death. But it was a most perplexing and harrowing question they had to decide—what really was Sacred Scripture? I am not bound to go to the stake for refusing to give up some ‘spurious’ Gospel or Epistle. Could I, then, safely give up some of the ‘controverted’ or disputed books, like the Epistle of St James, or the Hebrews, or the Shepherd of Hermas, or the Epistle of St Barnabas, or of St Clement? There is no need to be a martyr by mistake. And so the stress of persecution had the effect of making still more urgent the necessity of deciding once and for all what was to form the New Testament. What, definitely and precisely, were to be the books for which a Christian would be bound to lay down his life on pain of losing his soul?

 

[dawid]

God Inspired the apostles and prophets to write. The people who received their writings preserved them, recognizing them as scripture from the beginning. In the four hundreds AD, Catholic fathers compiled them in a canon including all the books known by those bishops who had the scriptures in their heritage of succession and excluding those books that were known by tradition to be spurious.

Dear Mammoths
Yours seems like a sound synopsis of the process.
The bishops were endowed with the authority and led by the Holy Spirit to discern the integrity of inspiration of the books to be included in the canon of the NT.

I find it useful to view it as the same as the development of the canon of the Hebrew Scriptures. Your synopsis appears to do so.

Kind regards

 

[rcwitness]

God Inspired the apostles and prophets to write. The people who received their writings preserved them, recognizing them as scripture from the beginning. In the four hundreds AD, Catholic fathers compiled them in a canon including all the books known by those bishops who had the scriptures in their heritage of succession and excluding those books that were known by tradition to be spurious.

After a lot of contemplation and reading, I’ve concluded that it’s impossible (for myself, at least) to believe that the Bible (the Canon of Scripture we proclaim and venerate) was established without the necessity of Sacred Tradition and the Magisterium.

I definitely agree with many Protestants, who attribute God’s Sovereignty to the process of achieving the Canon. Yet, He never the less used Tradition and Church authority.

 

[Mammoths]

After a lot of contemplation and reading, I’ve concluded that it’s impossible (for myself, at least) to believe that the Bible (the Canon of Scripture we proclaim and venerate) was established without the necessity of Sacred Tradition and the Magisterium.

I definitely agree with many Protestants, who attribute God’s Sovereignty to the process of achieving the Canon. Yet, He never the less used Tradition and Church authority.

I don’t fully understand what is meant by sacred tradition in this context however, the way I meant it was simply that if a church had received directly from the hand of peter the second epistle of peter and the pastor of that parish had personally preserved and passed it on for 300 years, that parish would be highly confident in its authenticity and scriptural status. If the epistle having been copied and distributed makes its way indirectly to a far city that has no way of verifying its origin, the local parish may have some doubt. However, Peter refers to Paul’s writings as scripture and Paul quotes Luke as scripture. Therefore, undoubtedly scripture was recognized for what it was by its original recipients immediately as these authors were contemporaries. In the process of distribution some books may have been in doubt as verification of authenticity was lost to some. Actually the fact that some parishes lost confidence in some of the epistles, gives one pause on faith in providentially perfect tradition. Just pause though, because it was tradition that restored that knowledge.

 

[Mammoths]

I don’t fully understand what is meant by sacred tradition in this context however, the way I meant it was simply that if a church had received directly from the hand of peter the second epistle of peter and the pastor of that parish had personally preserved and passed it on for 300 years, that parish would be highly confident in its authenticity and scriptural status. If the epistle having been copied and distributed makes its way indirectly to a far city that has no way of verifying its origin, the local parish may have some doubt. However, Peter refers to Paul’s writings as scripture and Paul quotes Luke as scripture. Therefore, undoubtedly scripture was recognized for what it was by its original recipients immediately as these authors were contemporaries. In the process of distribution some books may have been in doubt as verification of authenticity was lost to some. Actually the fact that some parishes lost confidence in some of the epistles, gives one pause on faith in providentially perfect tradition. Just pause though, because it was tradition that restored that knowledge.

 

[rcwitness]

I don’t fully understand what is meant by sacred tradition in this context however, the way I meant it was simply that if a church had received directly from the hand of peter the second epistle of peter and the pastor of that parish had personally preserved and passed it on for 300 years, that parish would be highly confident in its authenticity and scriptural status.

Yes, Sacred Tradition is that which has its origin from Christ and/or His Apostles.

If the epistle having been copied and distributed makes its way indirectly to a far city that has no way of verifying its origin, the local parish may have some doubt. However, Peter refers to Paul’s writings as scripture and Paul quotes Luke as scripture. Therefore, undoubtedly scripture was recognized for what it was by its original recipients immediately as these authors were contemporaries. In the process of distribution some books may have been in doubt as verification of authenticity was lost to some. Actually the fact that some parishes lost confidence in some of the epistles, gives one pause on faith in providentially perfect tradition. Just pause though, because it was tradition that restored that knowledge.

The issue becomes more than each community, who received “a Scripture” directly from an Apostolic source. Each community must accept the other Scriptures that were delivered to **other ** local communities.

I would point to St. Irenaeus as an important Apostolic source for defending the true Scriptures. He defended the “fourfold” Gospels, when many Christian communities held one over the other. Maybe because they were more confident, as you allude, that their origin was directly from an Apostle. But this did not ensure the other Scriptures. For this, they needed to trust Tradition. But not just any Tradition. A Sacred Tradition, which St Irenaeus upholds is affirmed in the See of Rome.

You see, I am talking about accepting an entire Canon. In order to do so, one must rely on a church making a decision, based on tradition and it’s own authority to make that decision. In Catholic language, it is called Sacred Tradition and Magisterium. So our rule of faith is dependent on Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and Magisterium.