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Why Bible-based Christianity is illogical

Vouthon

Vouthon

Dominus Deus tuus ignis consumens est
Premium Member
izzy88 said:
While your post was very informative and insightful (as usual), I'm not really seeing how anything you said makes Sola scriptura logical.
Click to expand...

It's not that I think the actual doctrine itself is logical, more a case that certain sola scriptura churches - such as traditional Lutherans and Anglicans - do not interpret this tenet so strictly (or, indeed, unreasonably) as to preclude the value and interpretative usefulness of tradition, especially the first seven ecumenical councils.

Consider 17th century Richard Hooker, the most important of the Church of England's 'divines':


"...Be it in matter of the one kind or of the other, what Scripture doth plainly deliver, to that the first place both of credit and obedience is due; the next where-unto is whatsoever any man can necessarily conclude by force of reason; after these the voice of the Church succeedeth. That which the Church by her ecclesiastical authority shall probably think and define to be true or good, must in congruity of reason overrule all other inferior judgments whatsoever.”

— Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, book V, 8:2
​

This is more nuanced than you'll find, say, among Southern Baptists.
 
H

Hawkins

Well-Known Member
If you don't believe God, your questions are pointless. If you believe a God, then He has all the ability to gain control over the canonization process to determine what to convey. The testimonies of God have a long history in OT, thus the canonization is long started with King Hezekiah. That's why 17 out of the twenty more books are said to be with a Hezekiah seal. The testimonies of NT is relatively short as its centered about the life of Jesus. It's canonization is made during 2nd to 4th century. Actually what drives the need of a canonization is the emergence of the many fake books. It's natural in a spiritual sense as there's always a war between God and Satan.

God's people as humans tried their best to stick with God to keep the Word as instrumented by God through the canonization. Those books don't need such a canonization process means, 1) the religion is not true thus no satan and etc. bothers to attack it with some fake books. Or 2) anyone can add or subtract the contents as there's not a canon ever existed. Buddha's holy book is such a book without maintenance.

That said. Some books have their values though they are not included in the OT Canon after serious examination, such as the book of Enoch and the books in Apocrypha.
 
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BilliardsBall

BilliardsBall

Veteran Member
izzy88 said:
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.n

Early church fathers denied the apocrypha. And prior to the beginning of the Roman church, even if you say it began in Caesarea with "you are the rock", the Jewish people disbelieved the intertestamental apocrypha (like the Maccabees) was scripture.

I would never say Rome determined which Bible books are canon, I would say a council led by Rome came together to affirm what people were saying at different times in different countries--that the 66 were true only.
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Left Coast

Left Coast

This Is Water
Staff member
Premium Member
izzy88 said:
@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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As in Christianity, I think the question of canon in Judaism hinges on what "authoritative" means, and authoritative for whom? The MT certainly became the widespread text in terms of use, but I think it's clear there was a canon functionally in use before then, though not all groups agreed, particularly about the later writings. This is similar to the situation in Christianity, where although a couple of local councils in the 4th century basically established the Western Catholic canon, it was largely settled in practice before then; controversy surrounded the texts written later (Hebrews, the Petrine epistles, the Johannine epistles, Revelation, etc.). Also, after those decisions, the Eastern churches continued using their even more expanded canon, and still do today.

Interestingly, parts of the Deuterocanonicals were actually discovered in Hebrew at Qumran.
 
izzy88

izzy88

Active Member
@BilliardsBall you should probably fix your formatting.

But in regards to your claim, it's simply untrue. While there was disagreement among the early Church Fathers about which books were canonical, to say that none of them quoted from the deuterocanonicals or accepted them as inspired is patently false.

How to Defend the Deuterocanonicals

Didn’t Jerome and Augustine disagree about the deuterocanonical books?

Yes, as did other early Christians. Numerous Church Fathers quoted the deuterocanonical books as Scripture, while some did not.

Jerome appears to have rejected most of the deuterocanonical parts of Scripture. But he did accept portions and included all seven books in his Latin translation of Scripture, known as the Vulgate. Ultimately, he recognized that the Church alone had the authority to determine the canon.

Since there was disagreement between some Church Fathers, it became obvious that no individual could provide an infallible list of inspired books. The bottom line: “We have no other assurance that the books of Moses, the four Gospels, and the other books are the true word of God,” wrote Augustine, “but by the canon of the Catholic Church.”

Since it is unreasonable to expect every person to read all of the books of antiquity and judge for himself if they are inspired, the question boils down to whose authority is to be trusted in this matter. One must either trust a rabbinical school that rejected the New Testament 60 years after Christ established a Church, or one must trust the Church he established.

Which deserves our trust? Martin Luther makes a pertinent observation in the sixteenth chapter of his Commentary on St. John “We are obliged to yield many things to the papists [Catholics]—that they possess the Word of God which we received from them, otherwise we should have known nothing at all about it.”
 
G

GoodbyeDave

Well-Known Member
Skwim said:
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.
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You have completely missed the point. The Protestants are not just saying "this is the Bible we choose to use". They are saying that the Bible is the only source of doctrine — that what the slogan sola scriptra means. The point made by the OP is that until some-one decides the text, you don't have a Bible — so the Bible cannot be the sole source, since it's dependent on that decision.

On the subject of the antiquity of the Jewish text, why do you think that the Septuagint contains more books? That translation was made by and for Greek-speaking Jews and it contained the books that were in use at the time. The Jewish authorities subsequently excluded some of those books, although some (like Judith) remained among Ethiopian Jews.
 
H

Hawkins

Well-Known Member
Left Coast said:
As in Christianity, I think the question of canon in Judaism hinges on what "authoritative" means, and authoritative for whom? The MT certainly became the widespread text in terms of use, but I think it's clear there was a canon functionally in use before then, though not all groups agreed, particularly about the later writings. This is similar to the situation in Christianity, where although a couple of local councils in the 4th century basically established the Western Catholic canon, it was largely settled in practice before then; controversy surrounded the texts written later (Hebrews, the Petrine epistles, the Johannine epistles, Revelation, etc.). Also, after those decisions, the Eastern churches continued using their even more expanded canon, and still do today.

Interestingly, parts of the Deuterocanonicals were actually discovered in Hebrew at Qumran.
Click to expand...

The Jews authority after Ezra goes to the Great Sanhedrin formed by mainly Pharisees and Sudducees. Sudducees are in control of the matters surrounding to the Temple, but Pharisees are in control of the religion as a whole. That's while there's only a 24 book Canon while the Sadducees only reckon the first 5 books.

Authentication coming from the nature of testimonies. OT is the testimonies of the Jews, the canonization thus belongs to them, under the effort of the Great Sanhedrin but not included the LXX. LXX is an uncontrolled copy while only a Jewish Bible is considered legitimate when written by a scribe authorized by the Great Sanhedrin. NT on the other hand is testimonies from the apostles, they are Christians. Thus its canonization belongs to the Christians. However information in the language Hebrew or Aramaic don't flow, as only Greek (or Latin) is universal for the writings to convey. That's how LXX became a solution back then.

God on the other hand, made use of the situation such that when the Catholics went corrupted as the Jews did He shifted the authority to the Protestants (the same as how such an authority got shifted from the Jews to the Christians in the presence of Jesus). Today, the Jews have a correct OT Canon, the Catholics have a correct NT Canon. Only the Protestants have both a correct OT and a correct NT Canon.
 
Left Coast

Left Coast

This Is Water
Staff member
Premium Member
Hawkins said:
The Jews authority after Ezra goes to the Great Sanhedrin formed by mainly Pharisees and Sudducees. Sudducees are in control of the matters surrounding to the Temple, but Pharisees are in control of the religion as a whole. That's while there's only a 24 book Canon while the Sadducees only reckon the first 5 books.

Authentication coming from the nature of testimonies. OT is the testimonies of the Jews, the canonization thus belongs to them, under the effort of the Great Sanhedrin but not included the LXX. LXX is an uncontrolled copy while only a Jewish Bible is considered legitimate when written by a scribe authorized by the Great Sanhedrin. NT on the other hand is testimonies from the apostles, they are Christians. Thus its canonization belongs to the Christians. However information in the language Hebrew or Aramaic don't flow, as only Greek (or Latin) is universal for the writings to convey. That's how LXX became a solution back then.
Click to expand...

I...think so? It's a little difficult to understand you, I'm sorry. To be clear, the LXX was also a "Jewish Bible," just translated by Jews into Greek.
 
H

Hawkins

Well-Known Member
Left Coast said:
I...think so? It's a little difficult to understand you, I'm sorry. To be clear, the LXX was also a "Jewish Bible," just translated by Jews into Greek.
Click to expand...

LXX is in Greek. It's not maintained by the authority back then. The authority back then is the Great Sanhedrin. LXX is not a controlled copy. It's accuracy is all up to the different publishers (possibly operated by the Hellenistic Jews who don't know Hebrew). The Great Sanhedrin is only responsible for the Canon in Hebrew (some said that the last two books are in Aramaic). And only a Bible in Hebrew/Aramaic written by a scribe assigned by the Great Sanhedrin is considered legitimate, and more importantly accurate.
 
Twilight Hue

Twilight Hue

Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
The thing about Pauline writings is that, according to the narratives that have been written in regards to the sayings of Christ, it violates the straightforward warning Jesus gave about false Christs and to believe it not before his actual return.

Paul essentially believed a vision well before the acknowledgement of any return by Christ, otherwise you'd have to confess that Christ had returned with Paul.
 
Sp0ckrates

Sp0ckrates

Member
izzy88 said:
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.
Click to expand...
Not sure what you mean by “bible-based” Christianity being untrue. Are you saying it’s illogical to hold that the only authoritative text is the Bible?
 
Left Coast

Left Coast

This Is Water
Staff member
Premium Member
Hawkins said:
LXX is in Greek. It's not maintained by the authority back then. The authority back then is the Great Sanhedrin. LXX is not a controlled copy. It's accuracy is all up to the different publishers (possibly operated by the Hellenistic Jews who don't know Hebrew). The Great Sanhedrin is only responsible for the Canon in Hebrew (some said that the last two books are in Aramaic). And only a Bible in Hebrew/Aramaic written by a scribe assigned by the Great Sanhedrin is considered legitimate, and more importantly accurate.
Click to expand...

Legitimate or accurate according to whom? I don't think all Jews worldwide agreed with each other.
 
izzy88

izzy88

Active Member
Sp0ckrates said:
Not sure what you mean by “bible-based” Christianity being untrue. Are you saying it’s illogical to hold that the only authoritative text is the Bible?
Click to expand...

I feel like I did a pretty decent job of explaining what I meant in the OP, but maybe someone else's explanation of my point will be helpful to you:
DavidMcCann said:
You have completely missed the point. The Protestants are not just saying "this is the Bible we choose to use". They are saying that the Bible is the only source of doctrine — that what the slogan sola scriptra means. The point made by the OP is that until some-one decides the text, you don't have a Bible — so the Bible cannot be the sole source, since it's dependent on that decision.
Click to expand...

It's sort of like if you took one of those pamphlets that Jehovah's witnesses give out to people, and decided to build a religion around what the pamphlet says, declaring it to have divine authority, while also claiming that JW is a false religion that does not have divine authority. You're sawing off the branch that you're sitting on.
 
Sp0ckrates

Sp0ckrates

Member
izzy88 said:
I feel like I did a pretty decent job of explaining what I meant in the OP, but maybe someone else's explanation of my point will be helpful to you:


It's sort of like if you took one of those pamphlets that Jehovah's witnesses give out to people, and decided to build a religion around what the pamphlet says, declaring it to have divine authority, while also claiming that JW is a false religion that does not have divine authority. You're sawing off the branch that you're sitting on.
Click to expand...
I see. So, my understanding of Catholicism is that there are believed to be three pillars of authority on which the Church stands: The Bible, the early Church Fathers and the teaching of the magisterium.

I mean, I don’t believe the Catholic Church holds that scripture has as little value as the writings of The Watchtower. Indeed, scripture is seen as having at least equal value to the other two pillars.
 
izzy88

izzy88

Active Member
Sp0ckrates said:
I see. So, my understanding of Catholicism is that there are believed to be three pillars of authority on which the Church stands: The Bible, the early Church Fathers and the teaching of the magisterium.

I mean, I don’t believe the Catholic Church holds that scripture has as little value as the writings of The Watchtower. Indeed, scripture is seen as having at least equal value to the other two pillars.
Click to expand...
Certainly; my point is simply that it cannot logically exist without the other pillars, as it does in most non-Catholic churches. I'm not in any way detracting from the importance of scripture, I'm saying that there's no way of knowing that the specific writings in the Bible were divinely inspired and that the droves of other writings weren't, without the Catholic Church making such a pronouncement with divine authority.
 
InvestigateTruth

InvestigateTruth

Veteran Member
izzy88 said:
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.
Click to expand...
Through the Will of God, the Word of God was protected. Whatever was lost, was not required to be part of the Bible. God is the master of events and has power over all things. Surely He is capable of protecting His own Book! A god who fails to protect His own words and testimony, is not Omnipotent.
 
1

1213

Well-Known Member
izzy88 said:
...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...

What you say leads to interesting contradiction, if Catholic Church is led by God and arranged the Bible, why are they not believing it?

I think it was some people who chose the books. If the people were led by God, it does not mean that also modern Catholic Church is led by God.

Also, in any case, the one who collects the book is very minor in comparison to those who wrote the books. But the one who collected them, has done good job, because the message in all of the books is uniform and good.
 
izzy88

izzy88

Active Member
1213 said:
What you say leads to interesting contradiction, if Catholic Church is led by God and arranged the Bible, why are they not believing it?
Click to expand...

Are non-Catholics really taught this? You're the third person I've spoken to here who claims the Catholic Church doesn't believe in the Bible. You've evidently been lied to; every teaching of the Church is supported by scripture.

1213 said:
I think it was some people who chose the books. If the people were led by God, it does not mean that also modern Catholic Church is led by God
Click to expand...

That's a completely ad hoc argument. You're assuming from the outset that the Bible is inspired, yet you would have no reason to assume so if the Catholic Church hadn't said that these specific books were inspired in the first place. Saying that the Church isn't always lead by the Holy Spirit but was when they compiled the Bible (although apparently not lead well enough since they included all those extra books) is a baseless claim; at that point you're appealing to pure fideism.
 
Samael_Khan

Samael_Khan

Qigong / Yang Style Taijiquan / 7 Star Mantis
izzy88 said:
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.
Click to expand...

As far as I know, the idea of Bible only based Christianity occurred after the reformation because the laymen disagreed with the catholic church.

The result was that different people decided to interpret the bible for themselves independent of experts which lead to much chaos which still happens today. Many people use the book and interpret it which ever way they wish and manipulate others to do their will. Which also happened with the catholic church.

I think this sentence you wrote is brilliant:

"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?"

Non Catholics do think that the Holy Spirit was working through those who compiled the books. Very ironic. I never thought about this myself when I was a Christian.

Plus I would add that Bible only based Christianity cannot be true because even those who claim to follow it need people to interpret the text, and they use archaeology and other disciplines to understand the text. Basically they use outside instruments to understand the text.

Also, if their view was true, then everybody would believe the same.
 
T

The Anointed

Well-Known Member
Israel Khan said:
As far as I know, the idea of Bible only based Christianity occurred after the reformation because the laymen disagreed with the catholic church.

The result was that different people decided to interpret the bible for themselves independent of experts which lead to much chaos which still happens today. Many people use the book and interpret it which ever way they wish and manipulate others to do their will. Which also happened with the catholic church.

I think this sentence you wrote is brilliant:

"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?"

Non Catholics do think that the Holy Spirit was working through those who compiled the books. Very ironic. I never thought about this myself when I was a Christian.

Plus I would add that Bible only based Christianity cannot be true because even those who claim to follow it need people to interpret the text, and they use archaeology and other disciplines to understand the text. Basically they use outside instruments to understand the text.

Also, if their view was true, then everybody would believe the same.
Click to expand...

Why do you suppose that the Roman Church of Emperor Constantine, rejected the books that the authors of Gospels and letters of their canon,had quoted from?
 
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