SS practicing Christian: What do you say Scripture is?

[rcwitness]

If we cannot know what is Scripture without the authority of the Church, how do we know the Church has the authority it claims?

Scripture/Tradition/Magisterium

But don’t get us wrong… it all takes faith!

 

[Abu]

SyCarl #318
If we cannot know what is Scripture without the authority of the Church, how do we know the Church has the authority it claims?

The historian Eusebius in his Church history, 4.3, 1.2, tells us that writing about 123 A.D., apologist Quadratus cited those in his day who had been cured or raised from the dead by Jesus of Nazareth – prime witnesses – long after the miracles, crucifixion and death of the Son of God.

Fact 1: There was a man called Jesus.
Fact 2: He claimed to be a messenger sent from God.
Fact 3: He did enough to prove that He was such a messenger – His many miracles.
Fact 4: Crowds followed Jesus and He had an inner circle to whom he spoke much more.
Fact 5: He commissioned His followers to continue His teaching and founded His Church.
Fact 6: Jesus affirmed that God would protect that teaching.

That is logical and complete.

The writings of these facts—the Gospels – are comparable with other ancient documents from writers such as Caesar, Tacitus, Thucydides and others, they are all reliable as history.

Historically, they prove that the messenger sent from God worked many miracles to support His mission and teaching to the extent of forgiving sins. God as Truth cannot provide such power to prove falsehood, so the claims of Jesus are true, culminating in the fact of His resurrection from the dead.

**So from the reliability of the Gospels as history, we now know that:

1. An infallible Church was founded by the Son of God
2. That infallible Church teaches that the Bible, as She has given us, is the inspired Word of God.**

She teaches by Her Sacred Scripture, Her Sacred Tradition and Her Magisterium.

 

[ProdigalSun]

yes, I would like sources that claim other known God breathed writings (Graphe Theopnesutos) are not included in the Canon

Thank you

Well other sources for scripture would come from Islam… namely the Koran.

Peace!

 

[ProdigalSun]

I am always astounded at the gymnastics that surround this issue.

Did God give us his son, or throw a book at us?
It’s really that simple.

God gave us his son, incarnate in human flesh, living among a people in the fullness of time, establishing a community. The book comes out of that community not the other way around.

It’s unavoidable for a Christian:
The Son of God is God’s fullest and final revelation.
All of it, including “theopnesustos”, comes from his person.

His person and his community validate the book. Without that you have nothing but a book disconnected from reality.

**Jesus is a person, not a book. **

Exactly right, If it was not for Christ and his Church there would be no way of knowing if either the Koran or The Bible was “God Breathed”

 

[jmcrae]

If we cannot know what is Scripture without the authority of the Church, how do we know the Church has the authority it claims?

There are two possibilities- the first is that neither the Church nor the Bible that it produced can be considered to be “without error,” (which means that liberal Christians who say that the Bible is an interesting historical artifact but not relevant to the modern Christian are logically more consistent than their more traditional counterparts) or, both the Bible and the Church that produced it are without error in their proclamation of the Good News of Jesus Christ.

I don’t see how you can have one without the other.

 

[ProdigalSun]

If we cannot know what is Scripture without the authority of the Church, how do we know the Church has the authority it claims?

Great question it is similar to What came first The Chicken or the Egg. Except in this instance we know it was Church because it was written in scripture given to us by the Church!

Peace!

 

[SyCarl]

Greetings.

And those books are still quoted from today. All that means, is that there is truth outside the bible, which you have acknowledged.

I think you misunderstand what I am saying. I am not talking about books outside the Bible. I am saying that the church fathers had no problem quoting Scripture before the Church defined the canon. They were able to discern what was Scripture without an authoritatively defined canon.

Latin Vulgate from the end of the 4th century has the same books in it that we have in our bibles today. Gutenberg Bible that came before Luther, same 73 books. So that’s a binding effect.

The Vulgate also contained Jerome’s preface to the Books of Samuel and Kings which states that what are called the Deuterocanonical books were not part of the canon. Many in the Church continued to hold Jerome’s view even after the local council’s tried to define the canon. This continued right up to Cardinal Cajetan who said it was necessary to defer to the judgement of Jerome.

Ok and It also teaches that the Church is the pillar and bulwark of the truth, 1 Tim 3:15 Pillars hold things up. If there was confusion or something to be settled you went to the Church, you didn’t just start your own independent church Matthew 18:17

According to fathers such as Chrysostom and Augustine, the binding and loosing referred to in Matthew 18:17-18. Was by the individual aggrieved Chrysostom quite clearly states it was not by the leaders of the Church.

.
But why did He set him with these? To soothe the person wronged, and to alarm him. Is this only then the punishment? Nay, but hear also what follows. “Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in Heaven.”2337 And He did not say to the ruler of the church, “Bind such a man,” but, “If thou bind,” committing the whole matter to the person himself, who is aggrieved, and the bonds abide indissoluble. Therefore he will suffer the utmost ills; but not he who hath brought him to account is to blame, but he who hath not been willing to be persuaded.

John Chrysostom (Homilies on Matthew, Homily 60)
ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf110.iii.LVII.html

Agreed.

So are you saying that all the ‘essentials’ are there for Christians?

Pax

Yes that is what I am saying. Augustine and Chrysostom also say the same even though they recognized oral tradition.

 

[SyCarl]

The historian Eusebius in his Church history, 4.3, 1.2, tells us that writing about 123 A.D., apologist Quadratus cited those in his day who had been cured or raised from the dead by Jesus of Nazareth – prime witnesses – long after the miracles, crucifixion and death of the Son of God.

Fact 1: There was a man called Jesus.
Fact 2: He claimed to be a messenger sent from God.
Fact 3: He did enough to prove that He was such a messenger – His many miracles.
Fact 4: Crowds followed Jesus and He had an inner circle to whom he spoke much more.
Fact 5: He commissioned His followers to continue His teaching and founded His Church.
Fact 6: Jesus affirmed that God would protect that teaching.

That is logical and complete.

The writings of these facts—the Gospels – are comparable with other ancient documents from writers such as Caesar, Tacitus, Thucydides and others, they are all reliable as history.

Historically, they prove that the messenger sent from God worked many miracles to support His mission and teaching to the extent of forgiving sins. God as Truth cannot provide such power to prove falsehood, so the claims of Jesus are true, culminating in the fact of His resurrection from the dead.

**So from the reliability of the Gospels as history, we now know that:

1. An infallible Church was founded by the Son of God
2. That infallible Church teaches that the Bible, as She has given us, is the inspired Word of God.**

She teaches by Her Sacred Scripture, Her Sacred Tradition and Her Magisterium.

The “spiral argument” has a great many flaws in it. For example.

1. There is very little historical evidence outside of Scripture itself that would lead to a conclusion that the Bible is historically reliable.
2. That something may be reliable in some parts does not establish the truth of all parts. If it did we could also conclude that the Greek gods were real because parts of Homer’s Iliad are historically accurate.
3. That the Church founded was infallible is a personal interpretation of the relevant Scriptures.

 

[SyCarl]

Great question it is similar to What came first The Chicken or the Egg. Except in this instance we know it was Church because it was written in scripture given to us by the Church!

Peace!

The fact that the Church may have come first, which could only apply to the New Testament, does not establish that it is an infallible authority.

 

[SyroMalankara]

If the Church is not infallible in faith and doctrinal teachings, the Bible cannot be known as such either. If neither are what the Church claims, based on Apostolic teaching, why be Christian?

 

[SyCarl]

There are two possibilities- the first is that neither the Church nor the Bible that it produced can be considered to be “without error,” (which means that liberal Christians who say that the Bible is an interesting historical artifact but not relevant to the modern Christian are logically more consistent than their more traditional counterparts) or, both the Bible and the Church that produced it are without error in their proclamation of the Good News of Jesus Christ.

I don’t see how you can have one without the other.

The Church did not produce the Bible. The Old Testament existed long before the Church. Even if the Church did produce the Scripture it does not logically follow that the Church is infallible. Paul tells us that the oracles of God were given to the Jews. Using your logic it could be said that the Jews produced the Old Testament, which is without error, and that therefore the Jews must have been without error.

 

[alwayswill]

You hear this literally all the time. The bible is discussed as if it sprang out of the hair of the apostles.

Scripture and the Bible are not the same thing:
All God breathed writings are Scripture:
The Bible is a collection of all known God breathed writings that we have access to.
There was a day when (for ex) the Letter to the Galatians did not exist : then the next day it did exist.
The Bible did not spring out of the Apostles; but Scripture did

Many people will admit the scriptures were taken from Tradition, but only when the logical dead end is pointed out and there is nowhere else to go.

I 100% deny that.
The Bible came of of tradition : Scripture did not

How can the community be guided by the superlative authority of Writ, when there was no writ for decades, at the very least.
And there ya go. You have met someone.

strawman

…(SS) is not a denial that God’s Word has been spoken. Apostolic preaching was authoritative in and of itself. Yet, the Apostles proved their message from Scripture, as we see in Acts 17:2, and 18:28, and John commended those in Ephesus for testing those who claimed to be Apostles, Revelation 2:2. The Apostles were not afraid to demonstrate the consistency between their teaching and the Old Testament.
vintage.aomin.org/SANTRAN.html

… I explained that "no advocate of Sola Scriptura would claim, for example, that the immediate hearers of Isaiah’s pronouncements were free to disregard his prophetic revelations simply because he had not written them down. This would be a silly understanding of Sola Scriptura
reformed.org/webfiles/antithesis/index.html?mainframe=/webfiles/antithesis/v1n5/ant_v1n5_issue.html

 

[SyroMalankara]

The Church did not produce the Bible. The Old Testament existed long before the Church.

not in the manner you have as a Christian.

Even if the Church did produce the Scripture it does not logically follow that the Church is infallible.

It does in that instance. Whether other instances exist is up for debate here.

Paul tells us that the oracles of God were given to the Jews. Using your logic it could be said that the Jews produced the Old Testament, which is without error, and that therefore the Jews must have been without error.

Not quite, there was no one sect called “the Jews”. The Jews were not promised the Holy Spirit til the next age. The Jewish promise is not nullified for the Jews, but is fulfilled in the Jewish Messiah. Those of us who are baptized are grafted into the right-believing family of Jews of the New Covenant

 

[SyCarl]

Since we have God’s written word, why so much emphasis on oral tradition?
Full Question
You place a lot of emphasis on oral tradition in the Catholic Church, but doesn’t the fact that we have a written Bible show this was the way we were intended to receive the word of God?
Answer
The preferred method of communicating the word of God was not in writing but by word of mouth. Much of the Old Testament was known orally for centuries before it was written down.

**Jesus himself wrote none of the New Testament. He established a living Church founded on Peter and the apostles, and he told them to preach. **We see in the epistles of Paul how anxious the apostle is about the welfare of the local churches he has established and how he wishes he could be there with them in person to guide and teach.

**In 2 John 12 we see explicitly in the written word itself how the apostles preferred to communicate directly with their own lips: “Although I have much to write to you, I do not intend to use paper and ink. Instead, I hope to visit you and to speak, face to face.”

The Bible is a testament to the oral tradition that was alive and already at work. Our source of the revealed word of God is Scripture plus Tradition – a Tradition that the Church Christ founded preserves and teaches. Much of that Tradition was reduced to inspired writing under the influence of the Holy Spirit.**
[My emphases].
catholic.com/quickquestions/since-we-have-gods-written-word-why-so-much-emphasis-on-oral-tradition

Luke tells us that Theophilus had been taught orally but Luke wrote his Gospel so that Theophilus could know the truth of what he had been taught.

Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a narration of the things that have been accomplished among us, According as they have delivered them unto us, who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word: It seemed good to me also, having diligently attained to all things from the beginning, to write to thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, That thou mayest know the verity of those words in which thou hast been instructed.

(Luke 1:1-4 DRB)

Why would this have been necessary if the oral teaching was accurate?

 

[alwayswill]

Originally Posted by SyCarl
The Church did not produce the Bible. The Old Testament existed long before the Church.

Originally Posted by SyroMalankara
not in the manner you have as a Christian.​

Do you mean not bound in a single book because that was technically impossible at the time and they had to use multiple scrolls?

Or are you about to tell us when Jesus (THE Christian) and the Apostles (Christians) thought something else when the quoted the HEBREW SCRIPTURES and called then Scriptures?

 

[alwayswill]

Well other sources for scripture would come from Islam… namely the Koran.

Peace!

Nope; the Koran is not God breathed

 

[SyCarl]

The Church’s authority comes from Christ, not the Holy Scriptures. The Holy Scriptures show us in written form what Christ already makes known to His community through the New Covenant.

So are we to accept that the Church has infallible authority because it says so? It can’t be because Scripture says so because, according to the argument presented, we can’t know what Scripture is before the infallible Church tells us.
,

 

[alwayswill]

Great question it is similar to What came first The Chicken or the Egg. Except in this instance we know it was Church because it was written in scripture given to us by the Church!

Peace!

Genesis is Scripture and was written about 1400BC

 

[alwayswill]

Great question it is similar to What came first The Chicken or the Egg. Except in this instance we know it was Church because it was written in scripture given to us by the Church!

Peace!

Chicken and egg test:

Did the Apostles know their writings were Scripture before the Church said those writings were Scripture?

 

[SyroMalankara]

Genesis is Scripture and was written about 1400BC

Who tells you, the Palestinian Jews, Ethiopian Jews, Babylonian Jews, the Samaritan Jews, Essene Jews, Jewish Christians, Karaite Jews, God directly, King James?