Sacred Scripture: "An fallible collection of infallible books"?

[RNRobert]

A while back I recall reading that some Evangelicals (like R.C. Sproul) consider the Bible to be “a fallible collection of infallible books.”

The mental image I get of this is of a man sitting high up in a tree sawing off the very tree branch he is sitting on.

To me this seems very dangerous. If you aren’t sure which books should be included, then how reliable are you that the “Word of God” is the Word of God? If the canon is fallible, then how do you know for certain that ANY of the books in Scripture are infallible? The passage you quote to support a particular belief may not be an infallible book after all. And perhaps, books like the Gospel of Thomas, etc. that the Church rejected may actually be inspired.

To me this way of thinking leads to relativism and atheism. Perhaps it is Protestantism being taken to its logical conclusion. As Orthodox convert Frank Shaeffer (son of Evangelical minister Francis Shaeffer) said when he was discussing the effects of the Reformation, “Sola Scriptura” became “Sola!”

 

[Lapell]

There exist inspiring books which were not “inspired”, you know! I guess the Gospel of Thomas was among these…
I am quite satisfied that the Canon of the Holy Scriptures as defined by the Church in the 4th or 5th Century is reliable. They include the Deuterocanonical books, of course.

 

[The_Dude]

The RC canon was not officially and infallibly defined until Trent. Christianity still flourished. And Christ held the Jews to the OT canon even though there was no infallible teaching institution.

Also, arguments like these sound compelling, but always remember to put your own position under the same analysis. Is there an infallible list of RC infallible teachings/statements? No, there are only fallible lists.

 

[Americanrevert]

Hello,

Let’s see what we have God willing, according to the Christian Theologians:

1. Original Manuscripts
2. Most Ancient Manuscripts
3. Ancient Copies
4. Vulgate
5. Wycliffe
6. Tyndale (which many of the New Testament was based from (he was actually burned at the stake for his blasphemy and yet they still put his words into the King James for people to take as fact)…go figure!
7. Coverdale
8. Great Matthews
9. Geneva
10. Bishops
11. King James 1611 also the Dolmy 1952
12. Revised Version 1881
13. American Standard Version
14. RSV 1952
15. RSV 1971

Now, why??? Does this signify that all the original manuscripts have perished? What do people now take as the literary foundation of the Bible?

What is found about the books of the Bible:

We know that Matthew didn’t write Matthew.
We know that the “according to’s” do not signify it was written by that person…like in Mark.
We know that Luke wasn’t written by Luke.
We know that John wasn’t the author of John.

Now, I ask, where is the true Gospel of Jesus? How or what gives one the right to hold firm to something and claim it was from someone they are clueless of or about? The Theologians know this and so does the Vatican, but secrecy is there and hidden agendas are definitely made. What gives someone the right to say it was inspired when they don’t even know who wrote it??? Many unknown authors’ works are recorded. This is a lie to attribute to a companion even of Jesus (on him peace). False witness is major…and to deny what is in front of your eyes when evidence proves true, is accusatory not fact. Major sin.

We even found plagiarism in the Bible.
Plagiarism means literary theft. Someone copies ad verbatim (word for word) from another’s writing and palms it off as his own, is known as plagiarism.

I don’t understand how one can just take things without understanding them first…with God as our Creator and witness, He has the final word, not man.

americanrevert

 

[Nickkname]

Is there an infallible list of RC infallible teachings/statements?

Yes, yes there is.

 

[Nickkname]

Hello,

Let’s see what we have God willing, according to the Christian Theologians:

1. Original Manuscripts
2. Most Ancient Manuscripts
3. Ancient Copies
4. Vulgate
5. Wycliffe
6. Tyndale (which many of the New Testament was based from (he was actually burned at the stake for his blasphemy and yet they still put his words into the King James for people to take as fact)…go figure!
7. Coverdale
8. Great Matthews
9. Geneva
10. Bishops
11. King James 1611 also the Dolmy 1952
12. Revised Version 1881
13. American Standard Version
14. RSV 1952
15. RSV 1971

Now, why??? Does this signify that all the original manuscripts have perished? What do people now take as the literary foundation of the Bible?

What is found about the books of the Bible:

We know that Matthew didn’t write Matthew.
We know that the “according to’s” do not signify it was written by that person…like in Mark.
We know that Luke wasn’t written by Luke.
We know that John wasn’t the author of John.

Now, I ask, where is the true Gospel of Jesus? How or what gives one the right to hold firm to something and claim it was from someone they are clueless of or about? The Theologians know this and so does the Vatican, but secrecy is there and hidden agendas are definitely made. What gives someone the right to say it was inspired when they don’t even know who wrote it??? Many unknown authors’ works are recorded. This is a lie to attribute to a companion even of Jesus (on him peace). False witness is major…and to deny what is in front of your eyes when evidence proves true, is accusatory not fact. Major sin.

We even found plagiarism in the Bible.
Plagiarism means literary theft. Someone copies ad verbatim (word for word) from another’s writing and palms it off as his own, is known as plagiarism.

I don’t understand how one can just take things without understanding them first…with God as our Creator and witness, He has the final word, not man.

americanrevert

John was written by John, actually. The former Priest John, who was a Disciple of Christ and a student of the Apostle John, acted as the mouthpiece and dictator of the Apostle John.

So before you go jumping to conclusions and making up historical facts, please, do the research.

 

[Americanrevert]

Hello,

I am not jumping to conclusions, I am stating facts. It is you that must look into your own religion…wouldn’t someone if something is stated as fact, be worried not to check it out, especially if it involves his/her salvation?

Some things are attributed to John but not proven and words in the book itself show it wasn’t written by John! I am not playin guesswork here, read it yourself…the pronouns speak for themselves~He, His, this, We know, I suppose…are not words from John~it’s obvious…two Johns…which one? one that left him in the lurch at the garden…or one at the supper table~the 14th man…both were named John…neither of these two are the author of the book “according to” John. you cannot prove it. impossible.

why the need for inverted commas?

americanrevert

 

[inJESUS]

John was written by John, actually. The former Priest John, who was a Disciple of Christ and a student of the Apostle John, acted as the mouthpiece and dictator of the Apostle John.

So before you go jumping to conclusions and making up historical facts, please, do the research.

she doesn’t know about the church fathers or any church history so bear with her…she’s a muslim…

 

[Nickkname]

Hello,

I am not jumping to conclusions, I am stating facts. It is you that must look into your own religion…wouldn’t someone if something is stated as fact, be worried not to check it out, especially if it involves his/her salvation?

Some things are attributed to John but not proven and words in the book itself show it wasn’t written by John! I am not playin guesswork here, read it yourself…the pronouns speak for themselves~He, His, this, We know, I suppose…are not words from John~it’s obvious…two Johns…which one? one that left him in the lurch at the garden…or one at the supper table~the 14th man…both were named John…neither of these two are the author of the book “according to” John. you cannot prove it. impossible.

why the need for inverted commas?

americanrevert

First, I apologize for being a bit rude in my response. I didn’t know you didn’t know the Church Fathers or Church history. My apologies.

You can’t use absolutes when speaking about proof, and I don’t mean that absolutely either. Now, I understand what you’re saying: How can John be using pronounes that indicate multiple individuals? Well, this is going to be hard to swallow, but I’ll try to explain it to you in the simpliest terms.

When the persons of the New Testament remember something, for example when Mary “kept all these things in her heart”, the remembering is always done together with the Church. This is why John says “We” and “He” and so forth. It is always a remembering with the Church, with the Tradition of the Church. However this isn’t to say the Church formed the gospels in such a manner that they correspond exactly to her teachings: that would actually destroy their historicity. Rather, the Traditon of the Church, which is always grounded in history ans is kept free from errror by God, helps the person remembering to remember, and so, preserves the historicity of the events in the gospels. The four ways the authors of the gospels remembered things are: Memory, Church Tradition, historical event, and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Now, given all these sources of memory, it would seem even one event in the gospels is a huge mess of different kinds of sources of information, and so, is unreliable; however, Christians believe that the Holy Spirit always has the last word in the gospels, and because the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth, whatever is not true, whatever did not occur, was never set down in the gospels. The Spirit of Truth guarentee’s the historicity of the gospels and the authenticity of the events portrayed within them.

Now, someone might object to this by pointing to St. Luke’s dating of Jesus’ birth and argue that the Evangelist had a fuzzy memory. True, his memory could have slipped him, that is a possibility, or we might not have the best information on the Roman Empire right now to see that St. Luke was right all along. The latter is especially realized in the Acts of the Apostles, where St. Luke placed a certain town somewhere where scholars for many years believed it should not have been placed; however, according to the most recent research about the town, it turns out that St. Luke was actually correct. So it was a matter of not having the best information on the town at the time. More reseach had to be done, and so, we found that the Envanglist was correct. I think this would be the case, too, for any so-called “historical errors” in the New Testament.

Finally, I know that the disciple John was the mouthpiece of the Apostle John, and so the Gospel of John actually was by the Apostle John (not written by him, but attributed to him, since he dictated it to the disciple John, who wrote everything down for him) because I did some research on the Gospel of Saint John. As it turns out, the remembrances of the disciple John and the Apostle John became, over time, intermingled, so they seemed to become one John, rather than two. In other words, the two men soon became remembered as one man, instead of two; however, studies were able to find that the John was not one John but two, the disciple and the Apostle respectively. And this - memories mingling together into one - is actually quite common among the ancient people, so it’s nothing special in the case of the Church.

 

[inJESUS]

Nickname, am afraid you wasted your time…the way muslims understand “revelation” is different than our understanding…not to be corrupt means Allah recites to Jibreel who recites to Muhammad who write recites it to someone else ecc, without anyone adding/removing a single word/letter…anything beyond this standard is called corrupt in Islamic wisdom who lives by the letter…so Muslims believe that no one besides muslims care about God or His words and so every nation corrupted everything except the muhammadan nation exactly because Allah decided to prove his faithfulness and omnipotence just with Arab bedouins.

 

[PerryJ]

The RC canon was not officially and infallibly defined until Trent. Christianity still flourished. And Christ held the Jews to the OT canon even though there was no infallible teaching institution.

Also, arguments like these sound compelling, but always remember to put your own position under the same analysis. Is there an infallible list of RC infallible teachings/statements? No, there are only fallible lists.

Catholic Bibles were defined well before Trent in several councils. They were infallibly stated at Trent because for the first time parts of the Bible were being rejected. It appears that your statement is misleading.

Thefact that the Bible nowhere list the books that are inspired is very improtant. It is one of the key failures of SS. Not only is SS not found in the Bible. There is not a list of infallible books to read. This is important as the DCs; which, should be in the Bible, are not not found in the Bible. Luther sectioned these off because he wanted to change doctrine. This in fact he did. He changed the doctrine by eliminating parts of the Bible. Therefore SS can not be true because doctrine changes based upon the books one uses.

Infallible list? We have the catechism and canon law? I believe our faith is better defined than any others. ???

 

[ralphinal]

If the list is fallible, there may be books that are in that should be out. Likewise, there may be some out that should be in. Ask which books should be taken out.

The list must be infallible for us to trust those that are in.

 

[cfrancis]

If the list is fallible, there may be books that are in that should be out. Likewise, there may be some out that should be in. Ask which books should be taken out.

The list must be infallible for us to trust those that are in.

Ralph makes a most compelling point.
Take 2 Pt 3:15-16:
15 and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation; just as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you,
16 as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction.

Without an infallible list, from the above we can draw the conclusion the Bible is missing at least two works:
1 - Paul’s letter to the Laodiceans (Col 4:16)
2 - Paul’s very first letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor 5:9)

 

[ralphinal]

Ralph makes a most compelling point.
Take 2 Pt 3:15-16:
15 and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation; just as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you,
16 as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction.

Without an infallible list, from the above we can draw the conclusion the Bible is missing at least two works:
1 - Paul’s letter to the Laodiceans (Col 4:16)
2 - Paul’s very first letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor 5:9)

Exactly. For arguments sake, let’s say that we are. Now, as a CAtholic, I can assume that these are not there because God did not see the need for them to make it into the cannon. If you deny the authority and infallibilty of the Church to make the list, where does that leave you?

 

[PerryJ]

Exactly. For arguments sake, let’s say that we are. Now, as a CAtholic, I can assume that these are not there because God did not see the need for them to make it into the cannon. If you deny the authority and infallibilty of the Church to make the list, where does that leave you?

I extend this argument to verses within the Bible and the translations being made. For example the use of the term “Highly Favored” instead of “Full of Grace”. The incorrect translation leads to incorrect thought. We are protected as our teachings are from the Holy Spirit. If you only have a book and the translation in front of you is flawed how do you rightly interpret scripture. One can’t.

 

[ralphinal]

I extend this argument to verses within the Bible and the translations being made. For example the use of the term “Highly Favored” instead of “Full of Grace”. The incorrect translation leads to incorrect thought. We are protected as our teachings are from the Holy Spirit. If you only have a book and the translation in front of you is flawed how do you rightly interpret scripture. One can’t.

AMEN

 

[reccanboy]

“These books the church holds to be sacred and canonical,** not because she subsequently approved them by her authority** after they had been composed by unaided human skill, nor simply because they contain revelation without error, but because, being written under the inspiration of the holy Spirit, they have God as their author, and were as such committed to the church.” - Vatican I

The Scriptures were recognized by the Church because they are divinely written, NOT because they were approved by councils.

 

[The_Dude]

Nickname wrote:
“Yes, yes there is.”

Really? I’d be interested in hearing about this - it would be news to a lot of theologians. Unless you mean, “yes an infallible list does exist, but has not been written down” which doesn’t really answer the point.

PerryJ wrote:
“Catholic Bibles were defined well before Trent in several councils. They were infallibly stated at Trent because for the first time parts of the Bible were being rejected. It appears that your statement is misleading.”

Why did some RC bishops and cardinals (Ximenes, Cajetan, Seripando, Madruzzo, etc.) before and during Trent follow Jerome then and not accept the DC’s as canonical in the same sense as the rest of Scripture (edifying, but not to be used for doctrine/matters of faith)? If the canon was fixed 1000 years earlier, how could people remain in good standing with Rome while doubting the DC’s? Do you not realize there were many arguments during Trent’s sessions on the canon? It wasn’t binding until Trent.

“Infallible list? We have the catechism and canon law? I believe our faith is better defined than any others.”

Yes, but neither of those are infallible, which is what the OP’s (and your) whole argument is focusing on. As Dulles writes in his book on the Magisterium, “The various teachings in the Catechism have no greater authority than they had in the documents from which they are drawn.” If there is no infallible list of infallible teachings of the RCC, then the argument that there must be an infallible list of infallible books seems to lose much of its force.

“Thefact that the Bible nowhere list the books that are inspired is very improtant”

How did Jesus hold the Jews accountable to the OT canon? Was there an infallible declaration by an infallible authority in the OT or intertestamental period? And again, Christianity still flourished for 1500 years before the infallible, binding list was made.

 

[Psalter]

why the need for inverted commas?

americanrevert

Why the need for no puntuation or capitalization, AmericanRevert?

apparently you follow the e e cummings school of capitalization

 

[ralphinal]

“These books the church holds to be sacred and canonical,** not because she subsequently approved them by her authority** after they had been composed by unaided human skill, nor simply because they contain revelation without error, but because, being written under the inspiration of the holy Spirit, they have God as their author, and were as such committed to the church.” - Vatican I

The Scriptures were recognized by the Church because they are divinely written, NOT because they were approved by councils.

That is correct. How do you know that there aren’t missing books?