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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.
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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