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Why Bible-based Christianity is illogical

izzy88

izzy88

Active Member
I'm not here to prove that Christianity is true, so please don't derail the thread with arguments about that. The point I'm going to make is that Bible-based Christianity cannot be true, and that the only forms of Christianity that can possibly be true are the ones which still have apostolic succession (The Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodoxy).

So, Bible-based Christians:
You believe that the Bible is the word of God, that the books in the Bible were divinely inspired, and you do not believe that any of the dozens of other books that were around back then are divinely inspired.

Here's a list of many of them:

(♦ = attributed to the Apostolic Fathers)
Now, do you know who it was that decided that none of these books were divinely inspired, and that the ones we now have in the biblical canon were?

The Catholic Church (though, back then, it was just The Church)

So, if you accept that the books in the Bible are indeed divinely inspired, you necessarily implicitly accept that the Catholic Church herself is the one true Church guided by the Holy Spirit - otherwise how could they have possibly decided which books were divinely inspired? Do you think they just got really really lucky?

To believe that the Bible has divine authority is necessarily to believe that the Catholic Church has divine authority. You simply cannot accept the authority of the Bible without implicitly accepting the authority of the Church.

Catholicism is not based on the Bible - the Bible is a product of Catholicism. The Catholic religion is based on what we call Sacred Tradition, overseen by the Magisterium - which is simply the term for all of the bishops who lead the Church. The bishops all have an unbroken line of succession back to the original twelve Apostles, and this line of succession is well-documented.

The Church was around for hundreds of years before the Bible was assembled, which happened in 382 at the Council of Rome, where the 73 books were canonized. This canon was reaffirmed by the regional councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397), and then definitively reaffirmed by the ecumenical Council of Florence in 1442). Finally, the ecumenical Council of Trent solemnly defined this same canon in 1546, after it came under attack by the first Protestant leaders, including Martin Luther.

Now, I'm presenting this as an argument, but if there are any non-Catholic Christians who want to argue against it, I am of course open to hearing what you have to say. This is simply how I see it, and I cannot see any possible way to accept the divine authority of the Bible without accepting the divine authority of the Church.
 
Skwim

Skwim

Veteran Member
izzy88 said:
So, Bible-based Christians:
You believe that the Bible is the word of God, that the books in the Bible were divinely inspired, and you do not believe that any of the dozens of other books that were around back then are divinely inspired.
Here's a list of many of them:
1
2
.
.
Now, do you know who it was that decided that none of these books were divinely inspired, and that the ones we now have in the biblical canon were?
Click to expand...
My guess is that they don't.

So, if you accept that the books in the Bible are indeed divinely inspired, you necessarily implicitly accept that the Catholic Church herself is the one true Church guided by the Holy Spirit
Click to expand...
Why?


- otherwise how could they have possibly decided which books were divinely inspired?
Click to expand...
By vote. You do know, do you not, that the canonical books of the Catholic religion were decided by vote, which was through "confirmation by the bishops."


To believe that the Bible has divine authority is necessarily to believe that the Catholic Church has divine authority. You simply cannot accept the authority of the Bible without implicitly accepting the authority of the Church.
Click to expand...
Why not? The Protestants simply didn't agree with the vote to included several extra books. Catholics had slipped a few books (7) into the OT that weren't in the Jewish Tanakh, so the Protestants simply excluded them. :shrug:

The Catholics chose to include them
The Protestants chose not to include them.

Catholics can do whatever they want with their religion and Protestants can do whatever they want with their religion. As far as I see it, it's a non-issue.


Now, I'm presenting this as an argument, but if there are any non-Catholic Christians who want to argue against it, I am of course open to hearing what you have to say. This is simply how I see it, and I cannot see any possible way to accept the divine authority of the Bible without accepting the divine authority of the Church.
Click to expand...
Okey dokey.
 
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izzy88

izzy88

Active Member
Skwim said:
The Protestants simply didn't agree with the vote to included several extra books. Catholics had slipped a few books (7) into the OT that weren't in the Jewish Tanakh, so the Protestants simply excluded them.
Click to expand...

The Church didn't "slip a few books in" that weren't in the Tanakh because the authoritative canon of the Tanakh wasn't decided until between the 7th and 10th century AD - hundreds of years after the canon of the Bible was declared.
 
Hockeycowboy

Hockeycowboy

Witness for Jehovah
Premium Member
izzy88 said:
Catholicism is not based on the Bible - the Bible is a product of Catholicism
Click to expand...

Umm....the Hebrew Scriptures were around a lot longer, than the RCC.

You don’t realize that God can even use heathens & pagans to accomplish His will? There are many examples.

You have a flawed premise.
 
Hockeycowboy

Hockeycowboy

Witness for Jehovah
Premium Member
izzy88 said:
Of course they were - the Hebrew scriptures were around before Jesus was even born. What's your point?
Click to expand...
Just a statement....they were already in use by the Jewish synagogues.

Actually, the last statement was more important.
 
Skwim

Skwim

Veteran Member
izzy88 said:
The Church didn't "slip a few books in" that weren't in the Tanakh because the authoritative canon of the Tanakh wasn't decided until between the 7th and 10th century AD - hundreds of years after the canon of the Bible was declared.
Click to expand...
Sorry, but you've been misinformed

"Scholars have debated whether the texts of the Hebrew Bible were written before 586 B.C.E.—when the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem, razed the First Temple and exiled the Jews—or later on, in the Persian or Hellenistic period. If literacy in Iron Age Judah was more widespread than previously thought, does this suggest that Hebrew Bible texts could have been written before the Babylonian conquest [around 500+ BCE]?
The Tel Aviv University researchers think so, based on their study of the ostraca from Arad.
[source]​
In fact:

"The final book, “The Minor Prophets,” is a collection of 12 short books, each containing the words or deeds of its eponymous prophet. Some of these are pre-Exilic (e.g., Amos and Hosea) and some are post-Exilic (e.g., Haggai and Malachi).

At some point someone collected these various books into a fixed collection, which we call “the Prophets,” but when?

Unlike the Torah, which Jews and Samaritans have in common, the Prophets is not accepted by the Samaritans as a holy text. So it is likely that the collection was canonized only after the schism between the groups, which took place in the fourth century B.C.E. On the other hand, we can reasonably surmise that the canonization of the Prophets didn’t take place much later than that, since it seems pretty clear that the collection was canonized before Alexander the Great destroyed the Persian Empire in 330 B.C.E., leading to the subsequent ascendancy of Hellenism.
source



Rabbinic sources hold that the biblical canon was closed after the end of the Babylonian Exile (538 BC or thereabout)
Source: Wikipedia



"With many other scholars, I conclude that the fixing of a canonical list was almost certainly the achievement of the Hasmonean dynasty. [175 to 134 BCE]"
Source: Philip R. Davies in The Canon Debate, page 50:


"According to the Talmud, much of the Tanakh was compiled by the men of the Great Assembly (Anshei K'nesset HaGedolah), a task completed in 450 BCE, and it has remained unchanged ever since.
Source:Bava Batra 14b-15a, Rashi to Megillah 3a, 14a)
​
So whatever the date may have been for the final assembly of the Tanakh it certainly didn't occur in the CE., much less the 7th and 10th century AD.


.
 
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Vouthon

Vouthon

Dominus Deus tuus ignis consumens est
Premium Member
@izzy88 I certainly agree with you as regards the fundamentality of the apostolic succession of the episcopacy (the "laying on of hands", from one generation to another all the way back to the Apostolic Age) and the tension in trying to square biblicism with the very apparent role played by tradition and the consensus of the ordinary Magisterium (bishops affirming the early canons).

There's a pithy and now famous saying of Cardinal St. John Henry Newman to the effect that: "To be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant" (An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845)).

With that being said, I would not personally go so far as to declare bible-based ("sola scriptural") eclesial communities "illogical".

I think their historical case is substantially weaker, though, than those churches which adhere in principle to the apostolic succession. In this category, I would add in Oriental Orthodoxy and Anglicanism (the latter's sacred orders are not recognised by the Catholic Church, due to rupture in the lines of succession, but they observe the principle).

In the Gospels Jesus gives His authority to the apostles in order for them to effectively shepherd others, conferring upon them duty of governing his ecclesia (assembly of believers, the church).

As early as the Letters of 1 and 2 Timothy, which although not actually authored by the Apostle Paul most likely draw on written sources of his "school", we see the clear primacy of the episcopacy (Bishops) as the leadership organs of the Church, the centre of unity at the local (diocesan) level and tasked with the duties and virtual office of the Apostles.

The early Christians were extremely self-confident and assured of their Apostolic Succession.

In fact so convinced where they of its authenticity, that they often challenged their pagan opponents to go and check the records for themselves.

In light of all this, read these self-confident words of Tertullian:


Tertullian (Demurrer Against the Heretics 32 [A.D. 200]):


"But if there be any [heresies] which are bold enough to plant [their origin] in the midst of the apostolic age, that they may thereby seem to have been handed down by the apostles, because they existed in the time of the apostles, we can say:

Let them produce the original records of their churches; let them unfold the roll of their bishops, running down in due succession from the beginning in such a manner that [their first] bishop shall be able to show for his ordainer and predecessor some one of the apostles or of apostolic men--a man, moreover, who continued steadfast with the apostles."​


Among early evidence outside of the Bible, as Bishops being the successors to the Apostles, we have the writings of the apostolic father Saint Clement I from around the year 80 - 90.

This is quite a remarkable document since it was written at the very "end" of the Apostolic Age, when the apostles could still have been within living memory. He wrote, at this early stage:


"...Through countryside and city [the apostles] preached, and they appointed their earliest converts, testing them by the Spirit, to be the bishops and deacons of future believers. Nor was this a novelty, for bishops and deacons had been written about a long time earlier. . .

Our apostles knew through our Lord Jesus Christ that there would be strife for the office of bishop. For this reason, therefore, having received perfect foreknowledge, they appointed those who have already been mentioned and afterwards added the further provision that, if they should die, other approved men should succeed to their ministry...

But not to dwell upon ancient examples, let us come to the most recent spiritual heroes. Let us take the noble examples furnished in our own generation. Through envy and jealousy, the greatest and most righteous pillars [of the Church] have been persecuted and put to death.

Let us set before our eyes the illustrious apostles. Peter, through unrighteous envy, endured not one or two, but numerous labours, and when he had finally suffered martyrdom, departed to the place of glory due to him. Owing to envy, Paul also obtained the reward of patient endurance, after being seven times thrown into captivity, compelled to flee, and stoned.

After preaching both in the east and west, he gained the illustrious reputation due to his faith, having taught righteousness to the whole world, and come to the extreme limit of the west, and suffered martyrdom under the prefects. Thus was he removed from the world, and went into the holy place, having proved himself a striking example of patience..."

- Saint Clement I, Letter to the Corinthians 42:45, 44:13 [A.D. 80-90]​



For me, the larger problem is the idea that the "Reformation" somehow returned Christianity to a more primitive modus operandi.

While certain ecclesiastical structures of Protestant churches - such as Presbyterianism and Congregationalism - have a decent argument at having resurrected an earlier, pre-monarchical episcopate style of church governance, the theologies of "absolute election, faith alone, individual predestination, total depravity and Sola scriptura" are not attested by scholars in the earliest circles of believers.

The more 'Jewish' the first generations of believers become in the reconstructions of contemporary scholars, such as the New Perspective on Paul (which correctly understands his "works of the law" as referring to the cultic, ceremonial regulations of the Torah as opposed to the moral law and denies that he preached a novel doctrine of grace), the less easily can they be construed in a 'Proto-Protestant' manner.

Ironically, the theology of Calvinistic strains of Protestantism - but also Lutheranism - owes far more, in my opinion, to a very strict and undiscriminating interpretation of Augustinianism (the Latin theology of St. Augustine of Hippo in the fourth century), than it does to what modern scholars would describe as the perspective of the early church.

On the other hand, many of the contemporary Protestant critiques of abuses by the Catholic Church in the sixteenth century - as over the sale of indulgences, the refusal to widely disseminated the Bible in the vernacular in preference for the Latin Vulgate, the reality of the priesthood of all believers as opposed to only the sacerdotal clergg and so on - were fully justified and indeed without the Protestant Reform, Catholicism itself would not have got it's stall back in order at the Council of Trent.
 
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PearlSeeker

PearlSeeker

Well-Known Member
Skwim said:
By vote. You do know, do you not, that the canonical books of the Catholic religion were decided by vote, which was through "confirmation by the bishops."
Click to expand...
Some wanted to keep only NT writings, others wanted to include some additional writings BUT the 4 Gospels and Paul's letters were never in question.
 
PearlSeeker

PearlSeeker

Well-Known Member
@izzy88

I agree church tradition produced NT Bible. I only have some doubts how apostolic this tradition really was. There is a substantial gap between Jesus and first writings of Paul (who met Jesus only in a vision).
 
Left Coast

Left Coast

This Is Water
Staff member
Premium Member
Skwim said:
Sorry, but you've been misinformed

"Scholars have debated whether the texts of the Hebrew Bible were written before 586 B.C.E.—when the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem, razed the First Temple and exiled the Jews—or later on, in the Persian or Hellenistic period. If literacy in Iron Age Judah was more widespread than previously thought, does this suggest that Hebrew Bible texts could have been written before the Babylonian conquest [around 500+ BCE]?
The Tel Aviv University researchers think so, based on their study of the ostraca from Arad.
source]​
In fact:

"The final book, “The Minor Prophets,” is a collection of 12 short books, each containing the words or deeds of its eponymous prophet. Some of these are pre-Exilic (e.g., Amos and Hosea) and some are post-Exilic (e.g., Haggai and Malachi).

At some point someone collected these various books into a fixed collection, which we call “the Prophets,” but when?

Unlike the Torah, which Jews and Samaritans have in common, the Prophets is not accepted by the Samaritans as a holy text. So it is likely that the collection was canonized only after the schism between the groups, which took place in the fourth century B.C.E. On the other hand, we can reasonably surmise that the canonization of the Prophets didn’t take place much later than that, since it seems pretty clear that the collection was canonized before Alexander the Great destroyed the Persian Empire in 330 B.C.E., leading to the subsequent ascendancy of Hellenism.
source



Rabbinic sources hold that the biblical canon was closed after the end of the Babylonian Exile (538 BC or thereabout)
Source: Wikipedia



"With many other scholars, I conclude that the fixing of a canonical list was almost certainly the achievement of the Hasmonean dynasty. [175 to 134 BCE]"
Source: Philip R. Davies in The Canon Debate, page 50:


"According to the Talmud, much of the Tanakh was compiled by the men of the Great Assembly (Anshei K'nesset HaGedolah), a task completed in 450 BCE, and it has remained unchanged ever since.
Source:Bava Batra 14b-15a, Rashi to Megillah 3a, 14a)
​
So whatever the date may have been for the final assembly of the Tanakh it certainly didn't occur in the CE., much less the 7th and 10th century AD.


.
Click to expand...

The Catholic and Orthodox canons are based on the Septuagint, or the Alexandrian canon, not the Hebrew text. Depending on the source you look at, there is a wide range of dates cited for the canonization of the Tanakh, depending on the section in question, and some estimates do stretch into the CE (though 7th century is too late, I agree). Historians believe Jewish leaders began distancing themselves from the Greek Septuagint after the advent of Christianity, to distinguish themselves from the new religion.

Creating the Canon | My Jewish Learning

The Very Long Process of Canonization of the Hebrew Bible : History of Information

Development of the Hebrew Bible canon - Wikipedia

Septuagint - Wikipedia

Biblical literature - Old Testament canon, texts, and versions

Who decided what books the Hebrew Bible would contain?
 
izzy88

izzy88

Active Member
@Skwim @Left Coast

So, as I've understood it, Left Coast is correct that the Catholic Old Testament is based on the Septuagint - which seems to date to the third century B.C. - while the Protestant Old Testament is based on the Masoretic Text - which dates to between the 7th and 10th century A.D. in its official form.

Masoretic Text - Wikipedia

The Masoretic Text[a] (MT or ) is the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the 24 books of Tanakh for Rabbinic Judaism.

It was primarily copied, edited and distributed by a group of Jews known as the Masoretes between the 7th and 10th centuries of the Common Era (CE).

The oldest extant manuscripts date from around the 9th century. The Aleppo Codex (once the oldest-known complete copy but since 1947 missing the Torah) dates from the 10th century. The Masoretic Text defines the Jewish canon and its precise letter-text, with its vocalization and accentuation known as the Masorah.

------

Obviously the writings of the Tanakh were around long before that, but from what I've read the earliest evidence we have of an authoritative canon is the 7th century A.D.

I took this to be comparable to how there were various texts around in the first few centuries which Christians were using, but nothing was official until the canon was established in the late 4th century. Maybe I'm missing something, though.

And as I understand it, the reason the Masoretic Text left out books that were part of the Septuagint was simply because they were written in Greek.
 
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izzy88

izzy88

Active Member
Vouthon said:
On the other hand, many of the contemporary Protestant critiques of abuses by the Catholic Church in the sixteenth century - as over the sale of indulgences, the refusal to widely disseminated the Bible in the vernacular in preference for the Latin Vulgate, the reality of the priesthood of all believers as opposed to only the sacerdotal clergg and so on - were fully justified and indeed without the Protestant Reform, Catholicism itself would not have got it's stall back in order at the Council of Trent.
Click to expand...

While your post was very informative and insightful (as usual), I'm not really seeing how anything you said makes Sola scriptura logical. The Reformers certainly had some very valid points about the abuses happening among clergy, but that doesn't make leaving the Apostolic Tradition and denying their authority, and then basing your religion entirely on the text that was a product of said authority, logical.

Either the Church had divine authority or it didn't. If it did, then the Bible has divine authority; if it didn't, then the Bible doesn't have divine authority. You can't have a divinely authoritative Bible without accepting the divinely authoritative Church.
 
Harel13

Harel13

Am Yisrael Chai
Staff member
Premium Member
izzy88 said:
Obviously the writings of the Tanakh were around long before that, but from what I've read the earliest evidence we have of an authoritative canon is the 7th century A.D.
Click to expand...
The earliest known complete Tanach may be that old, but there are discussions in the Mishna (precursor of the Talmud) about canon status of certain books and the subsequent decision to canonize them - meaning that the Tanach was canonized at least before the time of the Mishna (roughly 200 CE).
 
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