U
Usagi
Guest
Hey folks,
I’m a pretty staunch Catholic, but I’ve seen some ideas thrown around in recent threads that seem to reflect misunderstandings (or at least poor presentation) of the history of Scripture and Tradition. Such misstatements leave our apologetic efforts open to challenge or even outright dismissal by our Protestant friends.
I’m referring especially to the repeated notion that the Church “didn’t have the Bible” until the late fourth century. While this is true in a sense, the way in which it is usually stated oversimplifies matters and runs into a real danger of denigrating the Scriptures, which is something no Christian should want to do.
It is true that we don’t hold up the Scriptures as the clear, self-interpreting sole rule of faith as some of our brethren do, but we must be careful in our arguments not to go so far as to tear down the actual importance of the written Word. Just as we are disturbed by Protestant apologists who seemingly reduce Mary to the status of a walking incubator in their zeal to challenge the honors Catholics accord her, we risk causing only consternation (in fellow Catholics as well as Protestant readers) if our efforts to “dethrone” the Scriptures make it seem as though we have no use for them at all.
Here’s the deal:
We must acknowledge that the majority of the written Word (forty-six books of seventy-three, by our count) did precede the existence of the Christian Church and even the earthly life of Christ. We see that both Christ and the Apostles used the Old Testament Scriptures to demonstrate Jesus’ Messiahship to their fellow Jews. Indeed, one of the earliest elements of Christian oral Tradition must have been the Christian interpretation of the Old Testament Scriptures. We even have a record (in the later New Testament Gospels) of Jesus himself starting the ball rolling on that element of Tradition by explaining all the Scriptural references to Himself to the disciples he met on the road to Emmaus. (Catholics could call that the first post-Resurrection Liturgy of the Word, complete with homily by Jesus Himself, and of course followed by what appears to be the first post-Resurrection Eucharist.)
So even from the beginning of Christianity, we already had Scripture in a central role, though existing within the framework of a new understanding (the beginnings of Christian Sacred Tradition).
After Jesus’ Ascension, the Apostles and their close associates did much of their preaching and teaching orally, as we know, but some things were conveyed in written form: letters of instruction, correction, or revelation; multiple narratives of the life and teachings of Jesus, each aimed at a particular audience under particular circumstances; and even (as a continuation or sequel to one of those narratives) a history of the Church’s spread so far, focusing on the roles of Peter and Paul.
It is generally agreed that all twenty-seven works of our present New Testament were completed by the end of the first century. So at that point, Christians had access to the entire Bible as we know it now. We know from the famous “twisting the Scriptures” bit in one of Peter’s letters that some of the earliest of these documents were already regarded as Scripture by the time the latest ones were written.
Now, of course, at that time there was no formal declaration of exactly what was “in” or “out” of the Christian canon, and there were some corner cases – some of the later-written NT books we now accept were not universally accepted at first, and some churches had liturgical readings from works that didn’t ultimately make the canon (the Didache, the Letter of Clement, etc.) But to say that the Church as a whole did not possess the Scriptures would be disingenuous. As we know, and often have to explain in response to other challenges, the Church usually doesn’t make formal declarations unless there is a strong heterodox view being presented. We know the Jews didn’t formally settle on a single canon until after we Christians came along, and even the Catholic Church didn’t finally set the canon in stone until after the Protestants appeared and started questioning it. So just because we didn’t have an “official” determination of the canon at that point is no grounds for saying that “the Church didn’t have the Bible” then.
Modern scholarship seems to show that the explosion of “alternative” gospels, books of apostolic acts, and so forth did not occur until the second century. By that time it would have been fairly easy for the “mainstream” Christian churches to realize that these works were not of apostolic origin – though I suppose that, just as when rediscovered in our modern day, they would have been presented as “lost” apostolic works, and might thereby have drawn astray some local churches. Certainly there must have been some advantage to the Gnostics of the time of associating their ideas with Christ and the Apostles, since they did so much of it.
Moving on, the fourth century is when Christianity finally came out from under the shadow of periodic persecution. Accompanying that, spurred on by growing heresies like that of Arius, was a great push for Christian leaders to meet together and hammer out details that had previously been left kind of fuzzy. Orthodox understandings of the nature of God and of Christ were worked out in the earliest ecumenical councils. The canon of Scripture was not addressed ecumenically at that time, perhaps indicating that it was not in great dispute. Nevertheless, at the end of the fourth century is when we see the local synods of Carthage and Hippo putting forth the first formal Christian canons of Scripture that we know of. Apart from some combining of books that we now treat as separate, these synods offer the same list of Old and New Testament books that Catholics now acknowledge. Around the same time, Pope Damasus issues a similar list.
This is what Catholic apologists on these boards often argue to be the beginning of the Christian Bible. Certainly, those synods and papal declarations represent the first attempt to settle on at least a regional canon, but to argue (as I’ve seen some of my fellow Catholics do) that therefore the Christians of the earlier centuries “didn’t have the Bible” is disingenuous. They always had the Old Testament and quickly accumulated the New, and the vast majority of what we now accept as Scripture was likewise accepted throughout the Church fairly early on.
Now, understand, I’m a faithful Catholic myself. I fully acknowledge that the Bible is our book, meant for use within the Christian community and in the context of its Tradition and practice, not an independent Guidebook to Everything that just anyone can pick up and use to recreate Christianity from scratch. Likewise, I acknowledge that, while God is the author of Scripture, He composed, revealed, and preserved it through the medium of His Church. The New Testament, and the Christian understanding of the Old Testament that we have recorded in it, are the written form of pre-existing Apostolic Tradition, and the Scriptures continue to be read and understood through the lens of a broader Tradition than what is explicitly written.
Still, it is misleading at best, and dishonest at worst, to speak as though the early Christians had no Scriptures until synods of bishops began issuing official canons. We rightly look askance at those who talk as though the Bible fell from Heaven in its present form, with no involvement by earlier generations of Christians (i.e., the Church). However, others would just as rightly look askance at us for speaking as though a previously-unknown Bible emerged from the 4th-century synods, even if that’s not really what we mean.
Usagi
I’m a pretty staunch Catholic, but I’ve seen some ideas thrown around in recent threads that seem to reflect misunderstandings (or at least poor presentation) of the history of Scripture and Tradition. Such misstatements leave our apologetic efforts open to challenge or even outright dismissal by our Protestant friends.
I’m referring especially to the repeated notion that the Church “didn’t have the Bible” until the late fourth century. While this is true in a sense, the way in which it is usually stated oversimplifies matters and runs into a real danger of denigrating the Scriptures, which is something no Christian should want to do.
It is true that we don’t hold up the Scriptures as the clear, self-interpreting sole rule of faith as some of our brethren do, but we must be careful in our arguments not to go so far as to tear down the actual importance of the written Word. Just as we are disturbed by Protestant apologists who seemingly reduce Mary to the status of a walking incubator in their zeal to challenge the honors Catholics accord her, we risk causing only consternation (in fellow Catholics as well as Protestant readers) if our efforts to “dethrone” the Scriptures make it seem as though we have no use for them at all.
Here’s the deal:
We must acknowledge that the majority of the written Word (forty-six books of seventy-three, by our count) did precede the existence of the Christian Church and even the earthly life of Christ. We see that both Christ and the Apostles used the Old Testament Scriptures to demonstrate Jesus’ Messiahship to their fellow Jews. Indeed, one of the earliest elements of Christian oral Tradition must have been the Christian interpretation of the Old Testament Scriptures. We even have a record (in the later New Testament Gospels) of Jesus himself starting the ball rolling on that element of Tradition by explaining all the Scriptural references to Himself to the disciples he met on the road to Emmaus. (Catholics could call that the first post-Resurrection Liturgy of the Word, complete with homily by Jesus Himself, and of course followed by what appears to be the first post-Resurrection Eucharist.)
So even from the beginning of Christianity, we already had Scripture in a central role, though existing within the framework of a new understanding (the beginnings of Christian Sacred Tradition).
After Jesus’ Ascension, the Apostles and their close associates did much of their preaching and teaching orally, as we know, but some things were conveyed in written form: letters of instruction, correction, or revelation; multiple narratives of the life and teachings of Jesus, each aimed at a particular audience under particular circumstances; and even (as a continuation or sequel to one of those narratives) a history of the Church’s spread so far, focusing on the roles of Peter and Paul.
It is generally agreed that all twenty-seven works of our present New Testament were completed by the end of the first century. So at that point, Christians had access to the entire Bible as we know it now. We know from the famous “twisting the Scriptures” bit in one of Peter’s letters that some of the earliest of these documents were already regarded as Scripture by the time the latest ones were written.
Now, of course, at that time there was no formal declaration of exactly what was “in” or “out” of the Christian canon, and there were some corner cases – some of the later-written NT books we now accept were not universally accepted at first, and some churches had liturgical readings from works that didn’t ultimately make the canon (the Didache, the Letter of Clement, etc.) But to say that the Church as a whole did not possess the Scriptures would be disingenuous. As we know, and often have to explain in response to other challenges, the Church usually doesn’t make formal declarations unless there is a strong heterodox view being presented. We know the Jews didn’t formally settle on a single canon until after we Christians came along, and even the Catholic Church didn’t finally set the canon in stone until after the Protestants appeared and started questioning it. So just because we didn’t have an “official” determination of the canon at that point is no grounds for saying that “the Church didn’t have the Bible” then.
Modern scholarship seems to show that the explosion of “alternative” gospels, books of apostolic acts, and so forth did not occur until the second century. By that time it would have been fairly easy for the “mainstream” Christian churches to realize that these works were not of apostolic origin – though I suppose that, just as when rediscovered in our modern day, they would have been presented as “lost” apostolic works, and might thereby have drawn astray some local churches. Certainly there must have been some advantage to the Gnostics of the time of associating their ideas with Christ and the Apostles, since they did so much of it.
Moving on, the fourth century is when Christianity finally came out from under the shadow of periodic persecution. Accompanying that, spurred on by growing heresies like that of Arius, was a great push for Christian leaders to meet together and hammer out details that had previously been left kind of fuzzy. Orthodox understandings of the nature of God and of Christ were worked out in the earliest ecumenical councils. The canon of Scripture was not addressed ecumenically at that time, perhaps indicating that it was not in great dispute. Nevertheless, at the end of the fourth century is when we see the local synods of Carthage and Hippo putting forth the first formal Christian canons of Scripture that we know of. Apart from some combining of books that we now treat as separate, these synods offer the same list of Old and New Testament books that Catholics now acknowledge. Around the same time, Pope Damasus issues a similar list.
This is what Catholic apologists on these boards often argue to be the beginning of the Christian Bible. Certainly, those synods and papal declarations represent the first attempt to settle on at least a regional canon, but to argue (as I’ve seen some of my fellow Catholics do) that therefore the Christians of the earlier centuries “didn’t have the Bible” is disingenuous. They always had the Old Testament and quickly accumulated the New, and the vast majority of what we now accept as Scripture was likewise accepted throughout the Church fairly early on.
Now, understand, I’m a faithful Catholic myself. I fully acknowledge that the Bible is our book, meant for use within the Christian community and in the context of its Tradition and practice, not an independent Guidebook to Everything that just anyone can pick up and use to recreate Christianity from scratch. Likewise, I acknowledge that, while God is the author of Scripture, He composed, revealed, and preserved it through the medium of His Church. The New Testament, and the Christian understanding of the Old Testament that we have recorded in it, are the written form of pre-existing Apostolic Tradition, and the Scriptures continue to be read and understood through the lens of a broader Tradition than what is explicitly written.
Still, it is misleading at best, and dishonest at worst, to speak as though the early Christians had no Scriptures until synods of bishops began issuing official canons. We rightly look askance at those who talk as though the Bible fell from Heaven in its present form, with no involvement by earlier generations of Christians (i.e., the Church). However, others would just as rightly look askance at us for speaking as though a previously-unknown Bible emerged from the 4th-century synods, even if that’s not really what we mean.
Usagi
