Budge

[Justified Saint]

[quote name='Eutychus' post='1040522' date='Aug 9 2006, 06:25 PM']
Odd, do you read your own book?

Even Peter, in his writings, alludes to the authority of Paul, and calls Pauls letters SCRIPTURE within his letters.

And if pope numero UNO was calling Paul's letters scripture, while Peter and Paul were still alive, why is that such a stretch for you to KNOW that all the others, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were too?

Do you HONESTLY think they were so stupid then, that people sat around for 300 years waiting for some guys to VOTE on things?

Give God some credit here guys, and the Holy Spirit too, sheesh.
[/quote]

Well, considering that both Peter and Paul died before the Gospel of John was written (and perhaps others), it is safe to say there were plenty of people at the time who didn't know the canon of scripture. You got to wait until its written before you can call it scripture! But of course, this wasn't the early church's understanding of revelation -- instead it centered around the reading of the OT, communion, and keeping the oral tradition/sayings of Jesus.

[SJP]

Budge, Eutychus,

It seems as if you have abandoned this thread.

Perhaps it is because you know, or choose to ignore the fact that the canon or official list of Scripture was only compiled by the Church toward the end of the fourth century—at Hippo in 393, Carthage in 397, whence it was sent to Rome for confirmation in 419.

So what did Christians do for almost 400 years without the bible?

[Aloysius]

come now, I would expect more from this than "Peter's letter alludes to Paul's letter as scripture and therefore Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John's gospels are also scripture" where is the connection to the four gospels there? and what gives Peter's letters authenticity (some modern scholars even question its authorship; I don't necessarily but just throwing that out there)?

For 400 years the Christians read many different writings in their liturgies; from the ones in our canons today to ones that aren't in our canon today, even the writings of their bishops at the time; they read the didache and sometimes gnostic gospels would creep into liturgies et cetera et cetera. It was a Catholic council that said "these books are inspired, the others are not" and settled the issue. If you do not accept the authority of that council, then that decision is void and every other writing from the first two or three centuries becomes a candidate to be the inspired word of God. The Didache is a good candidate.... why do you not think that was inspired? Many parts of it date all the way back to around 44 AD written by the Apostles themselves in Jerusalem.

[Budge]

[quote]So what did Christians do for almost 400 years without the bible?[/quote]

They had the Bible, so what if it wasnt made official by the Catholic church?

[ReinnieR]

[quote name='Budge' post='1041130' date='Aug 10 2006, 04:45 PM']
They had the Bible, so what if it wasnt made official by the Catholic church?
[/quote]
well those people were catholics.

how can they disagree with their own religion??

[Aloysius]

Where does the canon of the New Testament come from? Why does it not include the didache, many parts of which can be traced to have been directly authored by Christ's Apostles. Why does it not contain any other christian writing from the first couple centuries? Christian writings, mind you, that were repressed by the Church in her final definition of the canon (responding to the fact that many Christians were holding them as authoritative and divinely inspired before this council).

what is the basis for 27 books being in the New Testament? there were hundreds up for consideration by the time the Church had to definitively weed out the ones that were not scripture from the ones that were.

[SJP]

Budge, you stated:

"They had the Bible, so what if it wasn't made official by the Catholic church?"

Really?

Many of the books in the New Testament are letters written to various [existing] Christian communities.
How could these early Christian communities read the Bible (complete and bound) before the letters were even written?
The fact that St. Paul wrote a [u]2nd [/u] letter to the Corinthians proves that there was already a Christian community at Corinth, a community that obviously could not have the complete works of the bible.

The idea of a complete and clear-cut canon of the New Testament existing from the beginning, that is from Apostolic times, has no foundation in history. The Canon of the New Testament, like that of the Old, is the result of a development, of a process.

[Guest JeffCR07]

[quote name='Budge' post='1041130' date='Aug 10 2006, 03:45 PM']
They had the Bible, so what if it wasnt made official by the Catholic church?
[/quote]

No, they didn't. They had a whole lot of letters that were read with varying frequency during the Liturgy. Some of those letters were later definitively proclaimed by the Church to be inspired, while others of them were not. "The Bible" did not descend, bound in gold, from heaven in one neat little package, and until the Church codified the Canon, people did not know with certainty what was or was not inspired scripture.

[Budge]

Christians knew which books were scripture before the first council made it official.

Dont you folks claim that your church held doctrines that were LATER made official like Immaculate Conception.

[Socrates]

[quote name='Eutychus' post='1040522' date='Aug 9 2006, 07:25 PM']
Odd, do you read your own book?

Even Peter, in his writings, alludes to the authority of Paul, and calls Pauls letters SCRIPTURE within his letters.

And if pope numero UNO was calling Paul's letters scripture, while Peter and Paul were still alive, why is that such a stretch for you to KNOW that all the others, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were too?

Do you HONESTLY think they were so stupid then, that people sat around for 300 years waiting for some guys to VOTE on things?

Give God some credit here guys, and the Holy Spirit too, sheesh.
[/quote]
Way to completely ignore what I actually posted, and respond to a distortion of your own imagining! (You seem to have a talent for that, Eutychus.)

I was not denying the authority of the Scriptures. Quite the contrary. I was simply asking by what authority the early Christians knew which writings were Sacred Scripture, and which were not. You have still not given a satisfactory answer. Obviously, the words of Peter had some authority as to what was Divinely Inspired Scripture there.

My point was simply that the Church existed before the New Testament was written down, and the writings of the New Testament came from the Church, and were declared to be Sacred Scripture by the same Church. If you read the Gospels and Acts, it is clear that the Gospel was preached orally by the Apostles before any of it was written down.
The Christian religion did not begin only after the books of the Bible were written.
The Church did not suddenly spring from a Bible dropped down from Heaven, but the Bible came from the Church, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

The doctrine of "Sola Scriptura" is nowhere found in Scripture, and is indeed an un-Biblical doctrine.

[quote name='Budge' post='1041677' date='Aug 11 2006, 03:40 PM']
Christians knew which books were scripture before the first council made it official.

Dont you folks claim that your church held doctrines that were LATER made official like Immaculate Conception.
[/quote]
How did they know this? Was everyone who is Christian able to simply read a piece of writing and automatically know whether it was inspired by God?