The Early Christians could not have believed in the Bible Alone

[Contarini]

Because both acts – both the establishment of a canon and it’s interpretation – require a single authority. For any given body of belief you cannot have two – let alone several – authorities because it is a contradiction in terms of the grossest sort and an imposition from something or someone outside that original authority.

It would be like a foreign country (or even an individual citizen) interpreting the U.S. Constitution. We would rightly say “I know you have your opinion but we have our own Supreme Court that the Founding Fathers established to do just that, thank you.”

Actually your analogy hurts your own argument. The Supreme Court did not ratify the Constitution! Your argument is bare assertion and has no logic behind it that I can see. The U.S. government gets along quite well with several authorities–in fact that’s the genius of the system. Your obsession with one unified “authority” comes straight from the Roman legal tradition. At the risk of being branded an anti-Catholic, I’ll tell you plainly that I think this is the spirit of Antichrist and I’ll have no truck with it. It’s responsible for most of the evil in your Church over the centuries. (I’m not claiming that Protestantism is in any better shape–we just have different evils!)

Edwin

 

[valient_Lucy]

Why does that follow? It’s certainly reasonable, but not a necessary conclusion.

Edwin

You do admit, however, that if an authority can infallibly determine what is Scripture and what is not, they may have authority in understanding it. So, even if they are not the only authority with the abillity to interpret the Bible, it certainly wouldn’t hurt to listen to them.

 

[valient_Lucy]

Actually your analogy hurts your own argument. The Supreme Court did not ratify the Constitution! Your argument is bare assertion and has no logic behind it that I can see. The U.S. government gets along quite well with several authorities–in fact that’s the genius of the system. Your obsession with one unified “authority” comes straight from the Roman legal tradition. At the risk of being branded an anti-Catholic, I’ll tell you plainly that I think this is the spirit of Antichrist and I’ll have no truck with it. It’s responsible for most of the evil in your Church over the centuries. (I’m not claiming that Protestantism is in any better shape–we just have different evils!)

Edwin

You’re right. That does certainly smack of “anti-Catholicism,” not to mention paranoia with the remark about the AntiChrist.

When a Catholic reads the Bible, he is not so arrogant to assume that he is the only person that God has ever spoken to in the history of the world, or that he is the only person in the world who has ever read the Bible. He is wise to remember that the Church, BOTH clergy and laity, have been reading the Bible for 2000 years and he would be wise to listen to what these people have to say, and learn from them.

In this, he avoids the evils of Protestantism: arrogance, pride, a selfish individualism and a distrust of others.

Sorry. Couldn’t resist.

 

[valient_Lucy]

In this, he avoids the evils of Protestantism: arrogance, pride, a selfish individualism and a distrust of others.

Sorry. Couldn’t resist.

I’m sorry. That was a pretty cheap shot, and I shouldn’t have said it.

 

[Contarini]

You’re right. That does certainly smack of “anti-Catholicism,” not to mention paranoia with the remark about the AntiChrist.

I really don’t care what labels you stick on my views. Look at history and ask yourself if I’m really so far off. When the Church revived the study of Roman law and made it the basis for ecclesiastical administration, the result was torture, persecution, increasing corruption, and ultimately (worst of all) the schisms of the Reformation. This same top-down understanding of authority is behind the far worse atrocities of the secular state.

I don’t care what you think about me. Just look at the evidence.

And frankly I don’t understand how it’s anti-Catholic to say that you and we are both in the same boat. Is anything less than an acknowledgment of your superiority anti-Catholic? Or did you miss that closing remark?

Protestantism in most of its forms has surrendered to the diabolical power of the modern state–the beast roaring with all its fangs bared.

When a Catholic reads the Bible, he is not so arrogant to assume that he is the only person that God has ever spoken to in the history of the world,

Since I don’t think this, this is hardly relevant!

or that he is the only person in the world who has ever read the Bible.

I don’t think this either.

He is wise to remember that the Church, BOTH clergy and laity, have been reading the Bible for 2000 years and he would be wise to listen to what these people have to say, and learn from them.

And I devote my life to doing exactly that. That is how I’ve come to the “paranoid” conclusions I have shared with this board.

In this, he avoids the evils of Protestantism: arrogance, pride, a selfish individualism and a distrust of others.

Sorry. Couldn’t resist.

These are indeed the evils of Protestantism. No apology is necessary. Unlike you (apparently), I don’t mind being told the obvious truth about my tradition.

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

You do admit, however, that if an authority can infallibly determine what is Scripture and what is not, they may have authority in understanding it.

I never said the Church was infallible, unless it’s infallible to be right. I believe in the indefectibility of the Church, which means that its determination of essential points of doctrine can’t be too far off. But I have no problem living with the possibility that it included a book or two too many. Indeed, if by “the Church” we mean the dominant, majority opinion, Protestants obviously think that this is what happened. Which is why this entire line of Catholic apologetic is so extremely strange. You say that we accept the Church’s determination without question–but we don’t.

So, even if they are not the only authority with the abillity to interpret the Bible, it certainly wouldn’t hurt to listen to them.

And I spend a lot of time doing just that. You will get no argument from me there. I’d like to see the CCC as a basic text in Protestant catechesis, and study groups in every Protestant church reading papal encyclicals.

Edwin

 

[Fidelis]

Actually your analogy hurts your own argument. The Supreme Court did not ratify the Constitution! Your argument is bare assertion and has no logic behind it that I can see.

It would be if I were infering what you think I am. I didn’t say the SCOTUS ratified the Constitution; I said the same authority that created the Constitution (our Founding Fathers) created the system that would make sure it was interpreted correctly. Similarly, the same Church that was guided by God to write and compile the Scriptures is the one that can interpret them.

Your obsession with one unified “authority” comes straight from the Roman legal tradition. At the risk of being branded an anti-Catholic, I’ll tell you plainly that I think this is the spirit of Antichrist and I’ll have no truck with it. It’s responsible for most of the evil in your Church over the centuries…

My, my, my. Don’t hold back, Edwin…tell us what you really feel. The Roman Catholic Church built upon the spirit of the anti-Christ?

Doesn’t leave much room for dialogue, does it?

 

[Mystophilus]

I thought the Canon was established around 382 AD at the Council of Hippo and then at Carthage a few years later. That Canon is exactly the same as the Catholic Bible today. 73 total books.

Unfortunately, like most things, it was a little more messy than that:
bible-researcher.com/canon8.html
ntcanon.org/lists.shtml

(Hippo is not included because we have no actual texts from that council; it is supposed to have been the same as Carthage.)

 

[Ken_Temple]

Until the canon of the NT was collected together under one “cover”, the rule of faith, “the preaching”, “the tradition”, “the faith”, functioned as the standard for correct doctine.

Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, and Athanasius all had a “rule of faith” or “the tradition” and the content of all of it was completely Scriptural. Every one is full of scriptural truth, and they are all a kind of doctrinal statement that is similar to the Apostles creed and Nicene creed and other formal creeds, developed in the 300s and 400s. Not one of them in Irenaeus or Tertullian or Athanasius has anything in them in those contexts any doctrine that Protestants have issues with the Roman Catholic Church. So the early church functioned by a Trinitarian rule of faith until the Scriptures were written and collected together under on cover.

Check them out for yourself: Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 1:10:1; 1:22:1; 3:4:2; Tertullian, Prescription Against Heretics, 13:1-6; Against Praxeas 2:1-2, Athanasius, Letters concerning Holy Spirit to Serapion, 1:27, 28, 29. ( I want to read Origen’s first before I say anything about his, I will confirm that later.)

When the disputed books (only 7, 2 Peter, James, 2-3 John, Rev. , Heb, and Jude) were finally discerned and settled, they certainly laid down a principle that is very close to “sola Scriptura”.

When Athanasius wrote “alone” in his Festal letter 39, he was teaching an early church patistric principle, “in these alone are the fountains of salvation and godliness”, (Festal letter 39, the first listing of all the 27 NT books extant), he is expressing a form of Sola Scriptura that was later developed by Luther and Calvin. It is at least “material sufficiency” and comes really close to formal sufficiency. It was the early church principle of the early fathers that Luther and Calvin fully articulated “Sola Scriptura” from, because the Medieval church had added other doctrines and claimed that they were from the apostles.

Luther called the book of James, “a right strawy epistle”, only in comparison with Romans and Galatians and Ephesians and Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith alone, and he doubted it for a while, but he never removed it from the canon. And as for the word “alone” in Romans 3:28, several R.Catholic versions in German and Italian also had the word “alone” there, because the point of alone is not “without the presence of good works or without hte fruits and evidences of good works”, but “faith alone” means without the condition of meritorious works; that is without any works as conditions for justification.

So, Luther added nothing, and took away nothing.

As for the Deutero-canonicals, since Hippo and Carthage were local councils, they were never seen as authoritatively binding on all Christians until Trent, and they were always in debate until Trent formally proclaimed the deutero-canonicals as inspired by God. Jerome did not agree that they were canonical, and also Gregory the Great and Cardinal Cajetan also wrote that they were not canonical. It was Trent’s reaction to the Protestant Reformation that forced them to formally and dogmatically proclaim them “canonical” in a secondary sense.

 

[Valke2]

Just wanted to get responses from folks that believe in the Bible Alone on this thought: The early Christians could not have believed in the Bible Alone because there was no Bible. I believe the first book of the NT was written for at least 10 years after Jesus’ death. The entire Bible was written for at least 45 years after Jesus’ death. Didn’t the word of God get spread orally?

I thought about his today when I heard on the radio that some protestant denominations wanted to get back to the ways of the early Christians. I thought the first thing they need to do is eliminate Sola Scriptura from their theology. I believe John Martignoni also touched on this same idea in one of his talks.

Do Sola Scripturalists think this is irrelevant? Thanks.

If they want to really get back to the early christians, the contemporaries of jesus, they would follow Torah while ignoring Talmud, I suppose. Jesus did not, apparently, try to overturn anything written in the written Torah. His beef seems to have been with the Rabbinic rulings set forth in Talmud. As I have said on another thread somewhere, the early christians & Jesus were in many ways similar to the Karaites (sp?), a sect of Jews that did not believe in following the Talmud, but only the written Torah.

 

[Contarini]

It would be if I were infering what you think I am. I didn’t say the SCOTUS ratified the Constitution; I said the same authority that created the Constitution (our Founding Fathers) created the system that would make sure it was interpreted correctly. Similarly, the same Church that was guided by God to write and compile the Scriptures is the one that can interpret them.

And the question is whether the analogy to the Founding Fathers is the Church or God! Actually the less loaded question is whether the Church hierarchy is simply to be identified with the Church, or whether it is one particular authority structure within the Church, just as the Supreme Court, the Presidency, and Congress are all specific authority structures within the United States.That I suspect is the real difference between us.

My, my, my. Don’t hold back, Edwin…tell us what you really feel. The Roman Catholic Church built upon the spirit of the anti-Christ?

Doesn’t leave much room for dialogue, does it?

Except that that’s not what I said. Your vision of Catholicism may be built up on the spirit of the antichrist, if you think the reason to be Catholic is that the Church has an authoritative answer for everything. That’s a fundamentally anti-Christian approach to life. It turns the Church into an idol.

But that is not what Catholicism is built on. Catholicism, like any other form of Christianity, is built on the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The “spirit of antichrist” is an infestation of the Catholic Church, not the root of Catholicism.

And as I said, we Protestants are in no better shape. Worse if possible. We don’t usually turn the Church into an idol, but we seek the same false security in other things. If I had the choice, I’d much rather make an idol of the Church than of the State or the autonomous individual, as very many Protestants do.

Few of us are entirely free from idolatry. I know I’m not.

Edwin

 

[Johnny_Lalonde]

Didn’t Luther add to and take away from the original divine revelation?

Yes. And as a side note, much of Luther’s ideas and reflections came to him while he was on the toilet. No, I am not kidding!

 

[Contarini]

Yes. And as a side note, much of Luther’s ideas and reflections came to him while he was on the toilet. No, I am not kidding!

No, you’re not kidding, but you are accepting uncritically a dubious reading of a cryptic shorthand abbreviation, made popular by Freud-obsessed scholars.

Luther said that he got his “breakthrough” (not “much of his ideas,” just one big idea) while “auf dem cl.” One possible interpretation–though grammatically unlikely–is that “cl” is an abbreviation for “cloaca” (toilet). But it could–and probably does–mean something quite different (“claustrum,” for instance). This is a really far-fetched idea which people take as fact because it’s colorful and helps them discredit Luther (though frankly I wouldn’t have a problem with someone getting ideas on the toilet, and the whole thing seems silly to me).

Edwin

 

[Will_Pick]

Just wanted to get responses from folks that believe in the Bible Alone on this thought: The early Christians could not have believed in the Bible Alone because there was no Bible. I believe the first book of the NT was written for at least 10 years after Jesus’ death. The entire Bible was written for at least 45 years after Jesus’ death. Didn’t the word of God get spread orally?

I thought about his today when I heard on the radio that some protestant denominations wanted to get back to the ways of the early Christians. I thought the first thing they need to do is eliminate Sola Scriptura from their theology. I believe John Martignoni also touched on this same idea in one of his talks.

Do Sola Scripturalists think this is irrelevant? Thanks.

I think the last book of the bible was REV .and it was written in about 90 to 100 AD

 

[Fidelis]

Except that that’s not what I said. **Your vision of Catholicism **may be built up on the spirit of the antichrist, if you think the reason to be Catholic is that the Church has an authoritative answer for everything. That’s a fundamentally anti-Christian approach to life. It turns the Church into an idol.

But that is not what Catholicism is built on. Catholicism, like any other form of Christianity, is built on the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The “spirit of antichrist” is an infestation of the Catholic Church, not the root of Catholicism.

Sorry, pal, I beg to differ. It is not MY vision of the Church, but part of the warp and woof of what the Church teaches about herself. From the CCC:

**
MORAL LIFE AND THE MAGISTERIUM OF THE CHURCH **

2032 The Church, the “pillar and bulwark of the truth,” “has received this solemn command of Christ from the apostles to announce the saving truth.” “To the Church belongs the right always and everywhere to announce moral principles, including those pertaining to the social order, and to make judgments on any human affairs to the extent that they are required by the fundamental rights of the human person or the salvation of souls.”

2033 The Magisterium of the Pastors of the Church in moral matters is ordinarily exercised in catechesis and preaching, with the help of the works of theologians and spiritual authors. Thus from generation to generation, under the aegis and vigilance of the pastors, the “deposit” of Christian moral teaching has been handed on, a deposit composed of a characteristic body of rules, commandments, and virtues proceeding from faith in Christ and animated by charity. Alongside the Creed and the Our Father, the basis for this catechesis has traditionally been the Decalogue which sets out the principles of moral life valid for all men.

2034 **The Roman Pontiff and the bishops are “authentic teachers, that is, teachers endowed with the authority of Christ, who preach the faith to the people entrusted to them, the faith to be believed and put into practice.” The ordinary and universal Magisterium of the Pope and the bishops in communion with him teach the faithful the truth to believe, the charity to practice, the beatitude to hope for. **

2035 **The supreme degree of participation in the authority of Christ is ensured by the charism of infallibility. This infallibility extends as far as does the deposit of divine Revelation; it also extends to all those elements of doctrine, including morals, without which the saving truths of the faith cannot be preserved, explained, or observed. **

2036 The authority of the Magisterium extends also to the specific precepts of the natural law, because their observance, demanded by the Creator, is necessary for salvation. In recalling the prescriptions of the natural law, the Magisterium of the Church exercises an essential part of its prophetic office of proclaiming to men what they truly are and reminding them of what they should be before God.

2037 The law of God entrusted to the Church is taught to the faithful as the way of life and truth. The faithful therefore have the right to be instructed in the divine saving precepts that purify judgment and, with grace, heal wounded human reason. **They have the duty of observing the constitutions and decrees conveyed by the legitimate authority of the Church. Even if they concern disciplinary matters, these determinations call for docility in charity. **

2038 In the work of teaching and applying Christian morality, the Church needs the dedication of pastors, the knowledge of theologians, and the contribution of all Christians and men of good will. Faith and the practice of the Gospel provide each person with an experience of life “in Christ,” who enlightens him and makes him able to evaluate the divine and human realities according to the Spirit of God. Thus the Holy Spirit can use the humblest to enlighten the learned and those in the highest positions.

2039 Ministries should be exercised in a spirit of fraternal service and dedication to the Church, in the name of the Lord. At the same time the conscience of each person should avoid confining itself to individualistic considerations in its moral judgments of the person’s own acts. As far as possible conscience should take account of the good of all, as expressed in the moral law, natural and revealed, and consequently in the law of the Church and in the authoritative teaching of the Magisterium on moral questions. **Personal conscience and reason should not be set in opposition to the moral law or the Magisterium of the Church. **

Without this, the Catholic Church ceases to be the Catholic Church. It may be some kind of transmogrified shadow, something in man’s own image, but it would not be Catholicism. Sound familiar?

 

[Ken_Temple]

Revelation could have been written before 70 AD. There is a lot of evidence for this in the book itself.

“Neron Caesar” in Hebrew comes out to “666”

The seven kings of Rev. 17:10,

5 have fallen:
Beginning with

1. Julius Caesar
2. Augustus
3. Tiberius
4. Caligula
5. Claudius

“one is” = “currently living at the time”
6. Nero

Also, Rev. 17:9 = the seven hills are the famous “seven hills of Rome”

The Beast = pagan Rome
The woman who rides the Beast = apostate Israel, who persecutes the prophets, apostles, and the Messiah = she is an adulterous woman, a harlot. “We have no king but Caesar”, etc.

This internal evidence in the book is stronger for a 68-early 70 AD, before the Temple was destroyed date, than Irenaeus, who has been interpreted that John wrote the Revelation around 96 AD during the time of Domitian.

If Paul and Peter were martyred around 64 AD in Rome, then all of their letters were written before then, including 2 Peter.

Jude was written around 80 AD and he says that “the faith was once for all delivered to the saints”.

The canon was finished in existence by 70 AD or 96 AD; but is was not discovered or discerned in every church under one cover until Athanasius Festal letter 39 in 367 AD; and all was canon when written down. The discernment or discovery of which books and letters were canon was a historical process.

Irenaeus wrote, "since, therefore, the tradition from the apostles does thus exist in the Church, and is permanent among us, let us revert to the Scriptural proof furnished by those apostles who did also write the Gospel. . . " Against Heresies, 3:5:1

The traditon or rule of faith, was nothing more than a Scriptural doctrinal statement. All doctrines in the rule of faith are in the Bible. The Roman Catholic church had no right to add to them the other doctrines.

so the early Chrisitans DID beleive in a kind of “Sola Scriptura”, according to what they had at the time, and taken in historical context; although not fully articulated or understood completely the way Luther and Calvin and other Protestants since then have formulated it.

 

[Fidelis]

Jude was written around 80 AD and he says that “the faith was once for all delivered to the saints”.

If you are asserting this verse is a statement on the closing of the canon, that is incredibly weak. Read the verse in it’s entire context and see how silly that would be. Jude is only saying we must contend for the Faith, not pronouncing the close of the canon.

The canon was finished in existence by 70 AD or 96 AD; but is was not discovered or discerned in every church under one cover until Athanasius Festal letter 39 in 367 AD; and all was canon when written down. The discernment or discovery of which books and letters were canon was a historical process.

Similarly, Athanasius letter is not a definitive pronouncement on the canon. As a single bishop, he didn’t have the authority, and, as we can see from a multitude of patristic writings after AD 39, the canon was very much in dispute until around AD 382.

Irenaeus wrote, "since, therefore, the tradition from the apostles does thus exist in the Church, and is permanent among us, let us revert to the Scriptural proof furnished by those apostles who did also write the Gospel. . . " Against Heresies, 3:5:1

Again, Irenaeus is being made to say something he is not. He IS saying we should obey the teachings of the apostles as if they were Scripture; he is NOT asserting here what is, and is not, canonical. He definitely cannot be misinterpreted here to be supporting anything like Sola Scriptura.

The traditon or rule of faith, was nothing more than a Scriptural doctrinal statement.

Really? Says who?

All doctrines in the rule of faith are in the Bible.

Amen, in a material sense, that is.

The Roman Catholic church had no right to add to them the other doctrines.

Amen, again. And this it has not done.

so the early Chrisitans DID beleive in a kind of “Sola Scriptura”, according to what they had at the time, and taken in historical context; although not fully articulated or understood completely the way Luther and Calvin and other Protestants since then have formulated it.

Sorry, you failed to prove your point. Nice try, though.

 

[Mystophilus]

Similarly, Athanasius letter is not a definitive pronouncement on the canon. As a single bishop, he didn’t have the authority, and, as we can see from a multitude of patristic writings after AD 39, the canon was very much in dispute until around AD 382.

With respect, Athanasius was more than ‘a single bishop’: he was the Patriarch of Alexandria. Canon 6 of the 325 Council of Nicaea recognised the authority of the see of Alexandria over Greek-speaking northern Africa as being equivalent to that of Rome over the Latin-speaking churches. Further, Athanasius’ personal role in the Arian debate gained him a lot of influence within the eastern Church.

Of course, this is merely a historical note, which in no way mitigates the truth of what you were saying: Athanasius did not settle the canon, as can be seen by the continuation of debate.

Having said that, disputes about the canon did not stop in 382. See, for example, the C7th Catalogue of the Sixty Canonical Books, which omits the Revelation, and also the Decretum Gelasianum, which, while possibly anachronistic, did indicate a C5th or 6th perception of a need for such a decree, a need which would not exist were the matter absolutely settled.

For Catholics, the canon was not settled until the Council of Trent in 1546. Protestants, as always, vary, but I believe that most English-derived ones can only securely trace theirs back to the Westminster Confession in 1646. The Orthodox, meanwhile, point to a tradition of using texts, rather than to a council per se, and thus use a wider canon than either Catholics or Protestants.

 

[Mr.Ex_Nihilo]

Of course it’s irrelevant, because the point of Sola Scriptura is not “nothing is divinely revealed unless it is written down.” The point of Sola Scriptura is “nothing can be added to the original divine revelation, and that revelation was eventually written down and recognized by the Church in the form of the New Testament.”

Edwin

But if that’s the case, then the definition of Sola Scriptura is virtually rendered meaningless.

For example, what you’ve claimed above is essentially no different from what the Catholic Church teaches.

For example, it’s well known that Catholic theology teaches even if revelation is already complete, it has not been made completely explicit; it remains for Christian faith gradually to grasp its full significance over the course of the centuries.

In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his only begotten Son.

Christ, the Son of God made man, is the Father’s one, perfect and unsurpassable Word. In him he has said everything; there will be no other word than this one. St. John of the Cross, among others, commented strikingly on Hebrews 1:1-2:

In giving us his Son, his only Word (for he possesses no other), he spoke everything to us at once in this sole Word - and he has no more to say. . . because what he spoke before to the prophets in parts, he has now spoken all at once by giving us the All Who is His Son. Any person questioning God or desiring some vision or revelation would be guilty not only of foolish behavior but also of offending him, by not fixing his eyes entirely upon Christ and by living with the desire for some other novelty.

As I already said in this thread, Sola Scriptura, upon closer examination, really isn’t Sola Scriptura at all. It’s tradition-- that is, traditional interpretations according to Luther, or Calvin, or Knox or Armenius for example

At least, there doesn’t seem to be any strong working definition of Sola Scriptura that doesn’t somehow involve one also…

a) …requiring knowledge of the Hebrew, Aramaic and later Greek languages spoken by the authors and transcribers,

b) …the cultural practices, including the archeological and geographical evidences of those people the Scriptures describe, such as the Babylonians, Egyptians, and Assyrians for example,

c) …and a basic understanding of the history of the Israelites coupled with at least some basic claim to knowledge of the early church in relation to what the Scriptures from both before Christ and after Christ actually describe.

In short, if Sola Scriptura requires all these things to clearly understand the Scriptures, then the people who uphold some form of Sola Scriptura aren’t really talking about relying solely upon the Scriptures at all.

In fact, in this context noted above anyway, they’re really talking about Sacred History, which is what the Catholic Church has been teaching since the beginning.

 

[ALLFORHIM]

sigh

I thought I would jump in here, not because I believe in ‘Bible Alone’ I believe that the Holy Spirit is a HUGE element when it comes to interpreting the Bible and God’s meaning within it. But for now I won’t necessarily get into that…

No, the bible did not exist when christianity was cutting it’s teeth in ancient times. They had something MUCH better. They had Jesus himself PLUS His disciples of whom He had taught face to face. What do you think makes up the NT? The teachings of Jesus. The words that He actually spoke from His human yet divine lips. The NT is also made up of letters that the disciples had written to various churches. THESE THINGS WERE THE BIBLE (and still are today). It just wasn’t organized as it is today.

So, though the bible wasn’t put together in the form that we have it doesn’t mean it didn’t exist. Jesus didn’t teach scripture alone because He was LIVING scripture. He taught from the OT while creating the NT. Jesus didn’t teach ‘Bible Alone’ because the bible didn’t exist then BUT while NOT teaching it He created the Holy Bible in which holds the Truths that we seek today.

Hi,

Thank you for that definition(so to speak). That was beautifully stated.

AFH