Where do Protestants think the Bible came from?

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The more I think about it, the more it puzzles me. Just what is the Protestant explanation of how the Bible first got put together? I’ve heard a few generic answers, but most of them don’t really explain anything at all. Examples:
  • “The Catholic Church did not make the Bible, it was the Holy Spirit.”
    (This is just a bad answer on so many levels it should be obvious… no explanation of just how the “Holy Spirit” carries this out…)
  • “The apostles wrote down everything they wanted people to know.”
    (Not all of the books of the NT were even written by the apostles, for one thing)
  • “When you read the Bible, it’s obvious that it’s inspired by God.”
    (subjective/emotional reasoning, no specific way given to differentiate inspired from “non-inspired” books)
If anyone here used to be (or is?) a Protestant, I’d be curious to know how this is all generally explained from that point of view in a consistent way. Thanks.
 
Don’t you know that God dropped a KJV from heaven onto the heads of the folks at the court of King James I?
Sarcasm over. Sorry.
When I was a protestant, I do not recall ever questioning where the Bible came from. I don’t think most of them think about it much and if you ask them, they get tongue tied. If you try to tell them, they get annoyed at the very least.
 
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catsrus:
Don’t you know that God dropped a KJV from heaven onto the heads of the folks at the court of King James I?
Sarcasm over. Sorry.
When I was a protestant, I do not recall ever questioning where the Bible came from. I don’t think most of them think about it much and if you ask them, they get tongue tied. If you try to tell them, they get annoyed at the very least.
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I always get told that I am reading revisionist history when describing the story of how the bible came to be, lol.
 
"Many modern Protestants point to four “Criteria for Canonicity” to justify the books that have been included in the Old and New Testament, which are judged to have satisfied the following:

Apostolic Origin — attributed to and based on the preaching/teaching of the first-generation apostles (or their close companions).
Universal Acceptance — acknowledged by all major Christian communities in the ancient world (by the end of the fourth century).
Liturgical Use — read publicly when early Christian communities gathered for the Lord’s Supper (their weekly worship services).
Consistent Message — containing a theological outlook similar or complementary to other accepted Christian writings. "
Wikipedia.

One of the messages that comes up repeatedly on this board is that God can do anything. I concur. I would say as a non-Catholic, and speaking for only myself, I would say that God gave us the Bible. Did God use a council? If so, that is once again attributable to God and not the specific worthiness of a council or the Catholic church. In fact, the Bible is full of God using all sorts of imperfect people to convey his message. Now let me also add that not all Christians use the same 27 books for the NT and I have no qualms about calling them Christian. Personally speaking, there is no such thing, obviously, as a Protestant consensus.
BrianH
 
One of the messages that comes up repeatedly on this board is that God can do anything. I concur. I would say as a non-Catholic, and speaking for only myself, I would say that God gave us the Bible. Did God use a council? If so, that is once again attributable to God and not the specific worthiness of a council or the Catholic church. In fact, the Bible is full of God using all sorts of imperfect people to convey his message. Now let me also add that not all Christians use the same 27 books for the NT and I have no qualms about calling them Christian. Personally speaking, there is no such thing, obviously, as a Protestant consensus.
BrianH
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Well, the Church never claimed that it was “worthy” or that any specific members of it were “worthy” to compile the Bible. If you think so, then I am happy to disabuse you of this idea. 🙂

The Church had the right and obligation to gather together the writings of the Bible because Christ gave Peter and the Apostles the right and responsibility of spreading the Gospel to all nations, the same mission of their successors, the bishops of the Catholic Church. The Bible is but a part of that commission–a very large and important part, of course, but still but a part of the Sacred Tradition, mostly oral, that Christ gave to Peter and the Apostles.

Remember, Jesus never commissioned a book of any kind. It was the Apostles and others who sat at their feet and/or ministered with them that gave us the NT. But, it was a council of the Church that declared which writings (up until then) were and weren’t inspired, proper for liturgical use, and contained the consistent message Christ entrusted to the Apostles and their successors. As well as deciding that no new writings would be a part of the canon of the Bible, which was also a very important decision made by the Catholic Church.
 
BrianH said:
"Many modern Protestants point to four “Criteria for Canonicity” to justify the books that have been included in the Old and New Testament, which are judged to have satisfied the following:…

Personally speaking, there is no such thing, obviously, as a Protestant consensus.
BrianH
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I concur. For many Baptists, the idea is that God used the early Christian communities to establish the divinely inspired set of texts. Those early Christian communities possessed a certain trustworthiness that need not have been explicitly in effect at any point in the future. I think the idea was that, if the Jews could not recognize Christ, then no Christian community would necessarily be immune to such shortcomings.

Saying that Christian communities could suffer shortcomings would not, then, invalidate Christ’s promise that the gates of hell would not prevail. A Christian community might make some mistakes and shortcomings, but even then – somehow, mysteriously – the gates of hell would still be at bay. (Compare the Jewish rejection of Jesus, yet the Jews still being considered to the chosen people of God, according to Christians.)
 
I understand what you are staying and the Catholic stance… 👍
I just don’t agree.
BrianH
 
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BrianH:
I understand what you are staying and the Catholic stance… 👍
I just don’t agree.
BrianH
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But you didn’t tell us how you disagree. Did the Hindus write the Scriptures? Did the Zorastrians? Did Dolphins? Why would you disagree that the Church wrote the Scriputres?

CDL
 
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BrianH:
I understand what you are staying and the Catholic stance… 👍
I just don’t agree.
BrianH
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Why? Isn’t what we are telling you historically the case? What is there to disagree over? The authority of the Church? Isn’t it found right in the Bible? Didn’t Jesus say he would establish his Church? Is a Church a book? And did Jesus ever say he would establish a book as the final authority in matters of faith and morals? :confused:
 
I was shocked… shocked… when in the course of a bull session, a priest informed me that, contrary to my [erroneous] understanding, the Church came first and the Bible came afterwards.

And I was around age 40 at the time. [double shock]

All that time, I HAD NO IDEA…

Subsequent research demonstrated that St. Jerome and St. Ambrose and St. Ausgustine got together after the persecutions ended and published the Bible as we know it today… and that was several centuries after the founding of the Church. It was just before Augustine died. He died around 430, if memory serves…
 
BrianH said:
"Many modern Protestants point to four “Criteria for Canonicity” to justify the books that have been included in the Old and New Testament, which are judged to have satisfied the following:

Apostolic Origin — attributed to and based on the preaching/teaching of the first-generation apostles (or their close companions).
Universal Acceptance — acknowledged by all major Christian communities in the ancient world (by the end of the fourth century).
Liturgical Use — read publicly when early Christian communities gathered for the Lord’s Supper (their weekly worship services).
Consistent Message — containing a theological outlook similar or complementary to other accepted Christian writings. "
Wikipedia.

One of the messages that comes up repeatedly on this board is that God can do anything. I concur. I would say as a non-Catholic, and speaking for only myself, I would say that God gave us the Bible. Did God use a council? If so, that is once again attributable to God and not the specific worthiness of a council or the Catholic church. In fact, the Bible is full of God using all sorts of imperfect people to convey his message. Now let me also add that not all Christians use the same 27 books for the NT and I have no qualms about calling them Christian. Personally speaking, there is no such thing, obviously, as a Protestant consensus.
BrianH
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Keep on reading in the Wikipedia article, and in the next two paragraphs, you find this:
The basic factor for recognizing a book’s canonicity for the New Testament was divine inspiration, and the chief test for this was apostolicity. The term apostolic as used for the test of canonicity does not necessarily mean apostolic authorship or derivation, but rather apostolic authority. Apostolic authority is never detached from the authority of the Lord. See Apostolic succession.

It is sometimes difficult to apply these criteria to all books in the accepted canon, however, and some point to books that Protestants hold as apocryphal which would fulfill these requirements. In practice, Protestants hold to the Jewish canon for their Old Testament and the Catholic canon for their New Testament.
(emphasis mine). Can you justify the reasons behind this boldface sentence Brian? Why would the Holy Spirit lead the Catholic council to correctly identify the New Testament, but mess up the Old Testament? Were the Jews - who rejected and crucified Jesus - more qualified to identify the Old Testament? How come?
 
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Atreyu:
It is sometimes difficult to apply these criteria to all books in the accepted canon, however, and some point to books that Protestants hold as apocryphal which would fulfill these requirements. In practice, Protestants hold to the Jewish canon for their Old Testament and the Catholic canon for their New Testament.(emphasis mine).

Can you justify the reasons behind this boldface sentence Brian? Why would the Holy Spirit lead the Catholic council to correctly identify the New Testament, but mess up the Old Testament? Were the Jews - who rejected and crucified Jesus - more qualified to identify the Old Testament? How come?
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Especially since the Jews didn’t finally decide on their “canon” until after Jesus had already died and the temple was destroyed.
 
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Atreyu:
In practice, Protestants hold to the Jewish canon for their Old Testament and the Catholic canon for their New Testament.(emphasis mine). Can you justify the reasons behind this boldface sentence Brian? Why would the Holy Spirit lead the Catholic council to correctly identify the New Testament, but mess up the Old Testament? Were the Jews - who rejected and crucified Jesus - more qualified to identify the Old Testament? How come?
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I’m not Brian, but I’ll take a shot.

To say that the NT is a “Catholic” canon, begs the question: which “Catholic”? Roman, or Eastern Orthodoxy?

Plus, Protestants could argue that Catholicism has evolved over time, such that the Church that established the canon, was not exactly the same Church that Luther encountered. (Compare: the Jews that Jesus encountered were not exactly the same as the Jews of David’s time, even though the priesthood was existent at both times.)
 
“If the King James Bible was good enough for Jesus, well it’s good enough for me!” 😃 (Just kidding.)

I actually heard that joke from a protestant friend of mine - so I’m okay, right?

Honestly, I think it’s a glaring contradiction among protestants to say that the Bible is “infallible” (inerrant) but the institution that infallibly set the canon of the bible is not.
 
Robert in SD:
Honestly, I think it’s a glaring contradiction among protestants to say that the Bible is “infallible” (inerrant) but the institution that infallibly set the canon of the bible is not.
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How is the Protestant position different from papal infallibility, which states that the Pope-as-Pope is infallible, but the person who is Pope is not?
 
Some of the ones I know around here think that it sprang full blown from the brow of King James I. Perish the thought that there were versions written in Old English 600 years or more before James I or that the Irish had copies of the Vulgate before that. Kells? What’s Kells? What disturbs me more about some protestants is not their interpretation of the Bible as much as it is their near total ignorance of just plain history - Jimmy Swaggart comes immediately to mind because he is right here in River City.
 
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Ahimsa:
How is the Protestant position different from papal infallibility, which states that the Pope-as-Pope is infallible, but the person who is Pope is not?
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The issue of biblical inerrancy has two components, both of which must be inerrant before we can speak of scripture as inerrant. The writings (books) must be inerrant, but that’s not enough. The identification of the inerrant writings must also be inerrant, or else our bible will have some errant (non-scriptural) writings in it, and will have left out some inerrant (scriptural) writings. It’s like providng a person with life-saving medicine. Not only must the prescribed medicine be effective in solving the medical problem, but the medicine must not be mixed with other medicines which are of no use, or are even dangerous, for the medical problem at hand. It doesn’t help to have a bottle where half the pills are the right medicine and half are not.

There is no similar set of linked components in papal infallibility.
 
Too many questions not enough time.
The Wikipedia artice was a general answer. I quoted it as a general source, I would have happily cut and paste more but found it rather simplistic but that is the nature of trying to provide a general framework for a good question. There are books written on this subject and any number of your good questions and learned replies(not from me) could fill them.

A general framework from just one(me) of half a billion of what Catholics term Protestants:

I am not an inerrantist…which I think makes me like most Catholics on this board. Well why not? The Bible does not support it. Before this sounds too circular…read a little later.
I have spent years reading history and I understand the Catholic stance, I do not agree with it. Well why Brian? Goodness people, have a couple of days?

Let me try and I will not bore you… too much.

As a teenager, a Gideon put a little orange Bible in my hand and I read it. From that I learned, granted from my perspective, what it meant to be a Christian. I did not have too much interference and right away picked out that people described the same situation differently…and I at that time thought…cool…no getting together and coming up with a lie. I was never an inerrantist…but the Bible rang true to me. My kids will describe a movie they saw in different terms but the message of the movie is accurate. As I became an adult, I learned about other ways of interpreting the Bible(name a denomination I could tell you what they think). It did not know to much about Catholicism, never been around it(little did I know that all three of my brothers and most of my friends would be Catholic as an adult). As I got my first history degree, I learned quite a bit about Christian history. I looked at Catholicism because in my view it did not look anything like what I read in that little orange book. Didn’t make sense why it did not. They were around for so long…where did that come from? I found out that most of the Catholic beliefs, in my view, come from tradition. Well that explains it I thought. Nothing wrong with that. More power to them. Studied how we got the Bible. Studied biblical criticism. Read all of Funk, read all of Crossan, read all of Spong, read conservative responses. Saw God working through people, imperfect people, imperfect Councils, imperfect churches. Studied early church history…did not and do not believe in any way, shape, or form the Catholic church(aka in these parts The Church) official position. Just my view…and the other 900 million(or thereabouts) Christians in the world.

Now that is irritating I am sure. I suppose over time I will weigh in on Peter, Mary, the whole nine yards. Specifically the Bible though. God provided what we needed for salvation. Did God work through a Council? Sure looks that way. Did the Bible teach that the Bishop of Rome(wasn’t he in Antioch first…I know the answer) is the universal successor for all of christendom? I did not get that from my studies. Would we have the same 27 books without the Catholic Church? I doubt it. Would Jesus still be the Son of God and the savior of humankind? I sure think so.
Are some of the Orthodox churches wrong for having different books? No way. I could care less. If…and I do not…if I thought that there was a one true church that carried on official Christianity, I am much more historically inclined to think the Orthodox church has a better grasp on things. I am not though. I am an independent Christian…and I cannot imagine anyone would still be reading my tripe. 😃
BrianH
The above is just an opinion and solely the view of me.
Thanks for reading if you did.
 
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VociMike:
The issue of biblical inerrancy has two components, both of which must be inerrant before we can speak of scripture as inerrant. The writings (books) must be inerrant, but that’s not enough. The identification of the inerrant writings must also be inerrant, or else our bible will have some errant (non-scriptural) writings in it, and will have left out some inerrant (scriptural) writings. It’s like providng a person with life-saving medicine. Not only must the prescribed medicine be effective in solving the medical problem, but the medicine must not be mixed with other medicines which are of no use, or are even dangerous, for the medical problem at hand. It doesn’t help to have a bottle where half the pills are the right medicine and half are not.

There is no similar set of linked components in papal infallibility.
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Here’s what a Protestant might say:
  1. The Christian community, when it decided on the canon, acted without error.
  2. There is no reason to assume that a particular portion of that Christian community (especially after 1054) necessarily still maintains the possibility of acting without error, at least because the Eastern Churches did not take part in the post-1500 A.D. councils.
  3. The similarity with papal infallibility doctrine is this: Protestants might say that they accept the Christian community’s acting without error in the limited circumstance of pre-1054 A.D. Likewise, Catholics believe that the Pope is infallible, in the limited circumstance of speaking ex cathedra.
 
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Ahimsa:
Here’s what a Protestant might say:
  1. The Christian community, when it decided on the canon, acted without error.
  2. There is no reason to assume that a particular portion of that Christian community (especially after 1054) necessarily still maintains the possibility of acting without error, at least because the Eastern Churches did not take part in the post-1500 A.D. councils.
  3. The similarity with papal infallibility doctrine is this: Protestants might say that they accept the Christian community’s acting without error in the limited circumstance of pre-1054 A.D. Likewise, Catholics believe that the Pope is infallible, in the limited circumstance of speaking ex cathedra.
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Are these arguments that you really have heard from Protestants in the past, or are you just trying to think of possible responses they might give in theory?
 
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