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Wes Hardin wrote:

Hello Mike,

I've been looking through your site because I enjoy the study of various faiths. I like the concept of a "Pizza and Theology" society. I'm not really sure how you implement it, but I like the idea.

Anyway, I was looking through your site and kept running across a phrase that disturbs me.
In a few of your postings, it has said, the Bible was:

"Written by Catholics, for Catholics, in the Catholic worship."
or
"The Bible is our book."

I think you do yourself more harm than good by being exclusionary and limited in your view of the Bible. You should say:

16 All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine,
for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.

(2 Timothy 3:16-17)

It can't really be said any better than that!

Wes Hardin

  • Are you exclusionary saying, the Bible was written by Catholics, for Catholics, for use in the Catholic Mass?

 

  { Are you exclusionary saying, "the Bible was written by Catholics, for Catholics, for use in the Catholic Mass"? }

Mike replied:

Hi, Wes —

Thanks for the comment.

You said:
I've seen in a few places that the Bible was:

"Written by Catholics, for Catholics, in the Catholic worship."
or
"The Bible is our book."

I think you do yourself more harm than good by being exclusionary and limited in your view of the Bible.

I don't see how a truthful view can be exclusionary.

Catholics collected and preserved the various biblical texts and determined which books would go into the Bible. Also, for years Catholic monks were responsible for preserving the text from year to year to year.

I did not mean to imply that Catholics wrote all books of the Bible, although one could make the argument that all of the writers, including the Old Testament writers, were following God's plan for salvation and are part of God's one true Church, the Catholic Church.

The Bible was "written and compiled by Catholics, for Catholics, for use in the Catholic worship service, the Mass." would have been clearer. In that sense, the Bible is Christendom's Bible; the (Book, Scriptures, and Written Word of God) for both Catholic Christians and non-Catholic Christians alike. As Scott Hahn says,

"When Catholics gather to faith share, we're playing a home game, not an away game."

To a certain extent, even our separated non-Catholic Christian brethren, are Catholic, without even knowing it.

  • What do I mean?

If you open your Bible you will see a list of books in the table of contents.

  • Who chose those books?
  • How do we know those are the right books?
  • How do we know those books are God's Inspired Word?

The Bible does not tell us "What are the inspired books of the Bible" nor, from a Protestant view, does it give us any inspired table of contents anywhere in the Scriptures.

The approved the table of contents you have in your Bible was first chosen in 382 A.D. at the Council of Rome under the direction of Pope Damascus I. (366-383 A.D.)

Here is the Biblical chronology:

51 A.D. to 125 A.D. The New Testament books are written.
140 A.D. Marcion, a businessman in Rome, taught that there were two Gods: Yahweh, the cruel God of the Old Testament, and Abba, the kind father of the New Testament. Marcion eliminated the Old Testament as scriptures and, since he was anti-Semitic, kept from the New Testament only 10 letters of Paul and 2/3 of Luke's gospel (he deleted references to Jesus' Jewishness). Marcion's "New Testament", the first to be compiled, forced the mainstream Church to decide on a core canon: the four Gospels and Letters of Paul.
200 A.D. The periphery of the canon is not yet determined. According to one list, compiled at Rome c. 200 A.D. (the Muratorian Canon), the New Testament consists of the 4 gospels; Acts; 13 letters of Paul (Hebrews is not included); 3 of the 7 General Epistles (1-2 John and Jude); and also the Apocalypse of Peter. Each "city-church" (region) has its own Canon, which is a list of books approved for reading at Mass (Liturgy)
367 A.D. The earliest extant list of the books of the New Testament, in exactly the number and order in which we presently have them, is written by Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, in his Festal letter # 39 of 367 A.D.
382 A.D. Catholic Council of Rome, whereby Pope Damascus (366-383 A.D.) started the ball rolling for the defining of a universal canon for all city-churches, listed the New Testament books in their present number and order.
393 A.D. The Council of Hippo  began "arguing it out." The Canon was proposed by Bishop Athanasius. Pope St. Siricius (384-399) was Pope during this period.
397 A.D. The Council of Carthage, which refined the canon for the Western Church, sending it back to Pope Innocent for ratification. In the East, the canonical process was hampered by a number of schisms (especially within the Church of Antioch). However, this changed by [405 A.D.]
787 A.D. The Ecumenical Council of Nicaea II, which adopted the canon of Carthage. At this point, both the Latin West and the Greek/Byzantine East had the same canon. However, the non-Greek, Monophysite and Nestorian Churches of the East (the Copts, the Ethiopians, the Syrians, the Armenians, the Syro-Malankars, the Chaldeans, and the Malabars) were still left out but these Churches came together in agreement, in 1442 A.D., in Florence.
1442 A.D. At the Council of Florence, the entire Church recognized the 27 books. This council confirmed the Roman Catholic Canon of the Bible which Pope Damasus I had published a thousand years earlier. So, by 1439, all orthodox branches of the Church were legally bound to the same canon.  This is 100 years before the Reformation.
1536 A.D. In his translation of the Bible from Greek into German, Luther removed 4 New Testament books (Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation) and placed them in an appendix saying they were less than canonical.
1546 A.D. At the Council of Trent, the Catholic Church reaffirmed once and for all the full list of 27 books. The council also confirmed the inclusion of the Deuterocanonical books which had been a part of the Bible canon since the early Church and was confirmed at the councils of 393 AD, 373, 787 and 1442 AD. At Trent Rome actually dogmatized the canon, making it more than a matter of canon law, which had been the case up to that point, closing it for good.

Source: Timeline of how the Bible came to us from CatholicBridge.com

So the approved the table of contents you have in your very own Bible was first put together at the Catholic Council of Rome in 382 A.D. and reaffirmed at the Second Council of Nicea (787 A.D.) by Pope Adrian.

So every time a Protestant opens a Bible to read it, they are re-affirming that:

The Pope and Catholic Bishops got it right!!

  • If the Pope and Bishops were correct on an issue of faith and morals then, why couldn't they be correct now?

Every time you open a Bible, you are implicitly saying:

"I believe the decision (on which books should be in the Bible and which books should not be in the Bible) that the Pope and Catholic bishops made back in 382 A.D. was correct."

  • If you can trust them with decisions on the Written Word, why not trust them with the Traditions of the Oral Word? (2 Thessalonians 2:15, 2 Timothy 2:2)
  • Or are you being "exclusionary and limited" on what you want to believe and what you don't want to believe?
  • Are you being your own Pope?
  • Are you deciding what Christianity is, and is not?

During the Reformation, Calvin and Luther took Catholic Bibles from Catholic Churches and
re-wrote them to meet their own needs.

Luther wanted to throw out the book of James and other books and called them "Epistles of straw"!

You said, quoting Scripture:

16 All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine,
for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.

(2 Timothy 3:16-17)

Yes, all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof,
for correction, for instruction in righteousness — but not only Scripture.

God, due to His Love for us, always gives us far more than we need and it is a historical fact that Our Lord wished to pass down through history many of His Divine Teachings by the Oral Word; choosing men and putting them in authority in His Church:

  • to protect and safeguard His Teachings, while
  • verbally instructing the faithful when confusion arose within the Church.

Luke 10:16 — Whoever hears you, hears me, he who rejects you, rejects me.

I used to run a free program that sent Catechisms to seeking Protestants and non-Christians but no longer have the financial or operational means to do this anymore. Nevertheless, if you wish to go deeper, consider buying a cheap copy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church to learn everything we believe as Catholics.

  • Is a Baptist going to be able to tell you what a faithful Catholic believes?
  • Will a faithful Catholic be able to tell you what a faithful Baptist believes?

Getting a copy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church will tell any non-Catholics what we truly believe, as Catholics, in context!

Written with the love of Our Lord,

Mike Humphrey
[A counter argument or rebuttal to my answer.]

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