Protestant bible History

[heisenburg]

This is an honsot question. I am not trying to berate or anything, jsut merely asking for curiosity sake…

I know many Protestants reject the history of the bible as espoused by th CC. My question is simple. If you beleive the CC did NOT ‘give us the bible’ (or atleast declare what was suppose to be in it.) How did the bible come about.

Again, an honsot question as I just want to understand your perspective.

Thanks to all those that respond.

In Christ

 

[asheeha]

Do we reject the History of the Bible?
I would say that a few Protestants actually study its history in depth. But most do not. And the beliefs of Protestants even on the reliability of the Word of God is enormously vast.
I do not know what the Bible scholars say and as I’ve studied Cathoicism more deeply I am finding a great many truths in her teachings.
I happen to be from a tradition that holds Scripture as the infallable Word of God. If Protestants are studied at all they realize that the Church cannonized scripture in a council. But I doubt they would admit that it was the same Catholic Church that they see today.
I am speaking in a general sense of course. I personally, when confronted with the the truth of where Scripture came from, cannot ignore the validity of the Catholic’s claim of Sacred Tradition.
Learned Protestants probably struggle with it. They will either deny the infallability of the Scripture or they will attribute the Word of God as being a divinely inspired text regardless of who decided which books would make up the Holy Scriptures. I often heard that God could keep one book Holy. I suppose many Protestants believe this is true in spite of the fact that the Catholic church defined it.
There are probably thousands of ways to work your way around its history…but most often, and in my case, it simply wasn’t thought about. Until somebody told me about Sacred Tradition and the authority that Christ handed to His Church and now I’m going to Mass and RCIA and on catholic.com.
There are other reasons, of course, but this was pretty significant.
Please offer me a bit of grace. This is my first post and I haven’t memorized all the rules. If I have violated any I would like to be notified.
Please realize that I cannot speak for all Protestants, these are simply some of the reasons that I have observed in statements and actions that I have witnessed in various Protestant denominations…but by no means all of them.
I hope this helps.

 

[heisenburg]

No, i dont think you violated any rules but welcome to the forums all the same

 

[beeliner]

This is an honsot question. I am not trying to berate or anything, jsut merely asking for curiosity sake…

I know many Protestants reject the history of the bible as espoused by th CC. My question is simple. If you beleive the CC did NOT ‘give us the bible’ (or atleast declare what was suppose to be in it.) How did the bible come about.

Again, an honsot question as I just want to understand your perspective.

Thanks to all those that respond.

In Christ

This is kind of an old thread, but I just gotta ask, what is a ‘honsot question’, Mr. Heisenburg? I’m uncertain.

 

[mdcpensive1]

This is an honsot question. I am not trying to berate or anything, jsut merely asking for curiosity sake…

I know many Protestants reject the history of the bible as espoused by th CC. My question is simple. If you beleive the CC did NOT ‘give us the bible’ (or atleast declare what was suppose to be in it.) How did the bible come about.

Again, an honsot question as I just want to understand your perspective.

Thanks to all those that respond.

About a year ago I was listening to a tape series on a debate between Catholics and Protestants in Dallas Texas. On the Catholic side there was Scott Hahn, Mitch Pacwa, Fr. Groeshel, and the question in this thread came up. I was not impressed with the Protestant answers and as the rules of the debate were made, it did not give much time to explore this question much from the answers given.

In a nutshell, the protestant answer was that the books in the bible are by themselves know to people to be in the bible because of what they are. Other books are excluded because they are just know to not be true scripture.

This answer left me wanting a better explaination and I guess I have not had the opportunity to hear a better answer if there is one. If there is I would indeed like to hear it to better understand why someone would believe in the bible alone.

mdcpensive1

 

[peary]

This is an honsot question. I am not trying to berate or anything, jsut merely asking for curiosity sake…

I know many Protestants reject the history of the bible as espoused by th CC. My question is simple. If you beleive the CC did NOT ‘give us the bible’ (or atleast declare what was suppose to be in it.) How did the bible come about.

Again, an honsot question as I just want to understand your perspective.

Thanks to all those that respond.

In Christ

Protestants reject the history of the Church too!

 

[Kay_Cee]

You know, this is an issue I’ve puzzled about and asked questions about several times, but I have yet to receive a satisfactory answer.

For one who is sola scriptura, isn’t knowing what constitutes scripture crucial?

Knowledge of what constitutes scripture is information. How, exactly, does someone get this information? A Catholic will point to the authority of the Church, but if one rejects that authority, how does one explain how he came by this information?

 

[peary]

You know, this is an issue I’ve puzzled about and asked questions about several times, but I have yet to receive a satisfactory answer.

For one who is sola scriptura, isn’t knowing what constitutes scripture crucial?

Knowledge of what constitutes scripture is information. How, exactly, does someone get this information? A Catholic will point to the authority of the Church, but if one rejects that authority, how does one explain how he came by this information?

He doesn’t. That’s the problem.

 

[CentralFLJames]

You know, this is an issue I’ve puzzled about and asked questions about several times, but I have yet to receive a satisfactory answer.

For one who is sola scriptura, isn’t knowing what constitutes scripture crucial?

Knowledge of what constitutes scripture is information. How, exactly, does someone get this information? A Catholic will point to the authority of the Church, but if one rejects that authority, how does one explain how he came by this information?

As have I puzzled over it. After a lot of pondering the only thing I can imagine is a condition of mass denial or a subjective conjecture that somehow, in some mysterious way, the early Christians were somehow not Catholic irrespective of that fact that we had an unbroken chain of popes and councils from St. Peter onward. Of course since history is not part of the Bible then sola scriptura as a literal doctrine does not need historical fact and advocates are thus free to live comfortably with a discontinuity of fact. That is, such can invent a false reality and claim that Christianity did not exist in a mature form until some obscure and mentally tormented monk named Luther came onto the scene in the 1500s to enlighten everyone.

At any rate it shows the irrationality of the entire sola scriptura concept since the Bible relies on Catholic Authority to define cannon but then uses a perverse interpretation of a revised Bible to reject the authority of The Catholic Church that defended the scriptures and delivered it through the ages.

There are people who really believe that Luther has essentially proven that mental illness and irrationality are contagious conditions and that he has replicated in mass his own condition. I am starting to come into that camp now too and just hope that its not now genetic and in the gene pool…

James

 

[MarcoPolo]

My experience of Protestants and Bible history falls in one of these categories:

• It is never considered, the 66 book canon is just accepted
• A myopic view of the history of the Church that doesn’t look prior to the Reformation, and therefore the Catholic Church added 7 books at Trent.
• A bizarre appeal to certain post-Resurrection Jewish canons
• An appeal to Luke 24:27 as somehow meaning the Bible is only Moses and the prophets which somehow means only the Protestant canon

 

[mercygate]

Do we reject the History of the Bible?
I would say that a few Protestants actually study its history in depth. But most do not. And the beliefs of Protestants even on the reliability of the Word of God is enormously vast.
I do not know what the Bible scholars say and as I’ve studied Cathoicism more deeply I am finding a great many truths in her teachings.
I happen to be from a tradition that holds Scripture as the infallable Word of God. If Protestants are studied at all they realize that the Church cannonized scripture in a council. But I doubt they would admit that it was the same Catholic Church that they see today.
I am speaking in a general sense of course. I personally, when confronted with the the truth of where Scripture came from, cannot ignore the validity of the Catholic’s claim of Sacred Tradition.
Learned Protestants probably struggle with it. They will either deny the infallability of the Scripture or they will attribute the Word of God as being a divinely inspired text regardless of who decided which books would make up the Holy Scriptures. I often heard that God could keep one book Holy. I suppose many Protestants believe this is true in spite of the fact that the Catholic church defined it.
There are probably thousands of ways to work your way around its history…but most often, and in my case, it simply wasn’t thought about. Until somebody told me about Sacred Tradition and the authority that Christ handed to His Church and now I’m going to Mass and RCIA and on catholic.com.
There are other reasons, of course, but this was pretty significant.
Please offer me a bit of grace. This is my first post and I haven’t memorized all the rules. If I have violated any I would like to be notified.
Please realize that I cannot speak for all Protestants, these are simply some of the reasons that I have observed in statements and actions that I have witnessed in various Protestant denominations…but by no means all of them.
I hope this helps.

I believe yeou are correct. In fact, one of the really excellent Protestant apologists, R. C. Sproul, has an excellent summary of the question of canonicity in which he lays out the facts as they are known by all reasonable scholars: the canon of the New Testament was determined by councils of the Church, using the criteria of “apostolicity” (attributed to an apostle or to a close associate of an apostle), “consistency” (not in conflict with any Church teaching), and broad acceptance for use in the liturgy in most, if not all, of the churches. Where he loses me is when he says that when the canon is closed, we no longer need the Church. His famous and oft-quoted analysis is:

For Catholics, the Bible is an infallible collection of infallible books. For Protestants the Bible is a fallible collection of infallible books.

I say: pick one (this is a no-brainer).

P.S. My own trip across the Tiber can be traced to the moment when a cocky Orthodox friend of mine tossed off the comment that “The Church gave us the Bible.” I had not thought about it until that moment. It was so OBVIOUS, but I had never thought about it.

 

[Kay_Cee]

Bump

 

[BlestOne]

I thought I would throw in a funny story to illustrate the average Protestant has no sense of the History of the Bible.

I went to a “Christian” Bookstore looking for a new Catholic Bible for my dh. It was about 5 minutes until closing and I couldn’t find a NAB or a RSV-CE version anywhere… I kept looking and looking. Finally, because they were about to close, I went up to the cashier and asked where the Catholic Bibles were. She replied that she thought if they had them, they would be in the “Alternative” Bible section. ALTERNATIVE BIBLE!!! I looked at her and said, “Alternative? Why would it be in that section? The Catholic Bible is the is the ORIGINAL BIBLE!!!” and then I proceeded on a rant about where the Bible came from…DH was mortified… The woman looked like she was afraid of me… like I was going to rob the store or trash it or something. So in the end I just stormed out totally insulted that they would consider my Bible “alternative.” My dh still will not go back into that store. Everytime we pass it, I ask who ever is in the car with me if they want to step in and look around… they all scream NO and ask about the alternative Bible section.

 

[CentralFLJames]

I thought I would throw in a funny story to illustrate the average Protestant has no sense of the History of the Bible.

I went to a “Christian” Bookstore looking for a new Catholic Bible for my dh. It was about 5 minutes until closing and I couldn’t find a NAB or a RSV-CE version anywhere… I kept looking and looking. Finally, because they were about to close, I went up to the cashier and asked where the Catholic Bibles were. She replied that she thought if they had them, they would be in the “Alternative” Bible section. ALTERNATIVE BIBLE!!! I looked at her and said, “Alternative? Why would it be in that section? The Catholic Bible is the is the ORIGINAL BIBLE!!!” and then I proceeded on a rant about where the Bible came from…DH was mortified… The woman looked like she was afraid of me… like I was going to rob the store or trash it or something. So in the end I just stormed out totally insulted that they would consider my Bible “alternative.” My dh still will not go back into that store. Everytime we pass it, I ask who ever is in the car with me if they want to step in and look around… they all scream NO and ask about the alternative Bible section.

Well, in all fairness I don’t think its fair to assume that a “dumb” or incompetent check-out cashier was “protestant” or even Christian just because the sign out front said “Christian Bookstore”. In all probability she was just some average hourly rate person, likely a heathen with an abandoned Sunday school teaching (if that), who needed money. That itself is ironic because there are a LOT of non-Christians making a living directly or indirectly from selling Christian materials and pandering to Christian values for profit. But what is double ironic is that those that are Protestants don’t find it objectionable to sell fiction and christian pop-conjecture (rapture etc.) to the tune of over a billion dollar industry when their forefathers took strong enough exception to some low level Catholic clerics taking donations for implied indulgences or engaged in Simony. It seems when it comes to protest against the Catholic Church there is always a double standard.

James

 

[BlestOne]

Well, in all fairness I don’t think its fair to assume that a “dumb” or incompetent check-out cashier was “protestant” or even Christian just because the sign out front said “Christian Bookstore”. In all probability she was just some average hourly rate person, likely a heathen with an abandoned Sunday school teaching (if that), who needed money. That itself is ironic because there are a LOT of non-Christians making a living directly or indirectly from selling Christian materials and pandering to Christian values for profit. But what is double ironic is that those that are Protestants don’t find it objectionable to sell fiction and christian pop-conjecture (rapture etc.) to the tune of over a billion dollar industry when their forefathers took strong enough exception to some low level Catholic clerics taking donations for implied indulgences or engaged in Simony. It seems when it comes to protest against the Catholic Church there is always a double standard.

James

With all due respect… I didn’t think it needed to be mentioned but this particular store only employs Christians. When I went up to the counter for help, she was reading her KJV Bible.

 

[deanarrca]

I thought I would throw in a funny story to illustrate the average Protestant has no sense of the History of the Bible.

I went to a “Christian” Bookstore looking for a new Catholic Bible for my dh. It was about 5 minutes until closing and I couldn’t find a NAB or a RSV-CE version anywhere… I kept looking and looking. Finally, because they were about to close, I went up to the cashier and asked where the Catholic Bibles were. She replied that she thought if they had them, they would be in the “Alternative” Bible section. ALTERNATIVE BIBLE!!! I looked at her and said, “Alternative? Why would it be in that section? The Catholic Bible is the is the ORIGINAL BIBLE!!!” and then I proceeded on a rant about where the Bible came from…DH was mortified… The woman looked like she was afraid of me… like I was going to rob the store or trash it or something. So in the end I just stormed out totally insulted that they would consider my Bible “alternative.” My dh still will not go back into that store. Everytime we pass it, I ask who ever is in the car with me if they want to step in and look around… they all scream NO and ask about the alternative Bible section.

OK You made my day. That is too funny!! There is a Christian book store by us I can’t remember the name now but I think it is a chain. Anyway when we first started attending the Catholic Church and RCIA I wanted a Catholic Bible. They had none and I figured they were strictly a protestant run bookstore. Anyway I didn’t have the guts to ask if they had any in another setcion. I actually wouldn’t have figured there would be another section of “alternative” bibles. So you are a brave and inspirational woman for speaking your mind and the truth and standing up for the Catholic faith. I still don’t think I could have done that. I eventually ordered an RSV Catholic Ed. from Amazon. I am still looking for a good Catholic bookstore close to me. There are some but they are a bit of a drive. I have found good resources online. I currently love my new Computer Program from Harmony Media called Welcome to the Catholic Church. harmonymedia.com/ It includes 2 bibles the RSV and Nab in the program, plus the Cathechisms, Plus Early writings of the Church and a lot more.
Anyway I have rambled on enough. Have a great day Deeny.

 

[Lief_Erikson]

In a nutshell, the protestant answer was that the books in the bible are by themselves know to people to be in the bible because of what they are. Other books are excluded because they are just know to not be true scripture.

This answer left me wanting a better explaination and I guess I have not had the opportunity to hear a better answer if there is one. If there is I would indeed like to hear it to better understand why someone would believe in the bible alone.

Many Protestants think that the books of the Bible are self-confirming. That’s pretty much what you’re describing. The truly canonical books, they’d argue, will 1) quote one another, 2) they won’t be inconsistent with one another, and 3) the Spirit can impress upon hearts that they are true.

There may be other points they’ll bring up too. These are the ones I’m aware of. Protestants in my own background are actually pretty much willing to do away with books of the scripture or add books to the canon depending on their personal opinion of what belongs, but I’m pretty sure that’s an anomaly, so I know less about the mainstream views. I think that the points I gave above pretty much cover the main viewpoints on it, though there probably more major points or arguments I’m overlooking.

These three points can be refuted very easily.

1. While many of the protocanonical scriptural books quote each other, some of them are not quoted at all. Also, sometimes they quote apocryphal works, so the fact that one book quotes another proves nothing about the quoted book’s infallibility.
2. Consistency is largely a matter of personal interpretation. One can interpret books in ways that are consistent or inconsistent as one pleases, so the consistency argument is very subjective, unless you have authoritative interpretations to rely on (and Protestants don’t).
3. A simple scan of the canon lists of the Early Church Fathers will show that this is not the case. People full of the Spirit came to all kinds of contradictory conclusions. Besides, Protestants do tend to believe Luther was full of the Spirit, and Luther removed from the Bible not only the Deuterocanonical books, but also Hebrews, James, Jude and Revelation. So it’s clear that the canon is not self-evident. Protestants have the canon they do because it is the one Protestant Reformers handed down to them, after bringing back the New Testament books Luther removed.

bible-researcher.com:

Luther himself took the liberty of criticizing some of these books in a polemical manner which few Lutherans today would find completely acceptable. He had a low view of Hebrews, James, Jude, and the Revelation, and so when he published his New Testament in 1522 he placed these books apart at the end. In his Preface to Hebrews, which comes first in the series, he says, “Up to this point we have had to do with the true and certain chief books of the New Testament. The four which follow have from ancient times had a different reputation.”

bible-researcher.com/antilegomena.html

If the true Bible is self-evident because of the Spirit, Luther didn’t have the Spirit, and neither did the Early Church.

 

[ISeekOnlyTruth]

About a year ago I was listening to a tape series on a debate between Catholics and Protestants in Dallas Texas. On the Catholic side there was Scott Hahn, Mitch Pacwa, Fr. Groeshel, and the question in this thread came up. I was not impressed with the Protestant answers and as the rules of the debate were made, it did not give much time to explore this question much from the answers given.

In a nutshell, the protestant answer was that the books in the bible are by themselves know to people to be in the bible because of what they are. Other books are excluded because they are just know to not be true scripture.

This answer left me wanting a better explaination and I guess I have not had the opportunity to hear a better answer if there is one. If there is I would indeed like to hear it to better understand why someone would believe in the bible alone.

mdcpensive1

Can you listen to that debate online? I find debates like that to be very informative.

 

[mdcpensive1]

Can you listen to that debate online? I find debates like that to be very informative.

No, I got a tape series on ebay when I searched on Scott Hahn.
It made me a little sad because two of the three Protestant scholars were ex-Catholics.

Also, I have always wanted to go into a non-denom bookstore and ask if they give discounts on bibles that don’t have all the books. I haven’t done this yet but maybe sometime. I can’t wait to see what the answers would be. Can anyone guess???

mdcpensive1

 

[Teflon93]

As my signature indicates, even Martin Luther recognized the role of the Catholic Church in assembling the Bible and distributing it across the world.