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Billy
Shoen
wrote:
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Hi, guys —
I left the Lutheran Church and will be joining
the Catholic Faith at Easter. I did take some
time to search
your site for an answer to my question
but could not find the exact answer although
many answers gave me relevant information
on the subject.
Anyway, I have had some dialogue with my Lutheran
pastor (we are still friends), and he has
been shocked that I would leave to become
Catholic. Our recent discussions center around Tradition and Sola Scriptura. My pastor
believes that nearly all people at the end
of the first and second centuries had access
to the writings which would become the New
Testament.
I have said that, although some writings were
available to the common folks, I didn't think
they were readily available. They would have
been very rare and probably locked up for
security reasons in the few churches that
had them.
So my questions are:
- When would normal, everyday, run-of-the-mill people, the vast majority of Gentiles,
and Jews have had access to readily reading
the letters and writings contained in the
New Testament?
- Also, when were the writings of the Old
Testament available for the masses?
This is a big sticking point, because I believe,
without access to the writings themselves
and having them available for study, all early
Christians clearly would have had to submit
to the authority of the Church. This, in itself,
would defeat the notion of Sola Scriptura.
I would sincerely appreciate your time with
an answer to this question or something that
leads me to the answer.
Thanks for your time,
Billy Shoen
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{
When would everyday people, have access to the New Testament and Old Testament writings? }
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Mike
replied:
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Hi, Billy —
You have brought up some great points
in your question.
Rather than re-inventing the wheel read these postings.
If they don't help, get back to us.
Remember, although we knew what books made
up the Bible by 382 A.D. at the Council
of Rome, no one had a Bible, the way we
have it now, until Gutenberg's
printing press which was invented around 1440.
If it weren't for the work of Catholic
(Benedictine) monks, your Lutheran
pastor wouldn't have a Bible today.
It was their work which preserved
the Holy Writ and allowed all Protestants
to hold the Bible they have in their
hands today. Check out:
Where
we got the Bible by Williams
Graham
Before 382 A.D. no one knew what Books
were inspired. There was no Inspired
Table of Contents.
That decision was made by Catholic
bishops with the guidance of the
Holy Spirit at the Council of Rome.
Every time a Protestant opens a
Bible, whether they are aware of
it, or not, they are implicitly saying:
I trust the decision made by
Catholic bishops in 382 A.D. at the
Council of Rome guided by the
Holy Spirit.
Ask your pastor, if he can trust the
decision the Church made back in
382 A.D.:
- Why doesn't he trust the same Church today?
- Why does he put more faith in
Martin Luther than in Jesus and
His One, Catholic Church?
I would encourage you to consider buying a cheap copy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church to learn everything we believe as Catholics. It will especially come in handy during RCIA classes.
Mike
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John
replied:
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Just a slight correction:
Mike wrote:
Before 382 A.D. no one knew what Books
were inspired.
I believe it would be better to say
that before 382 A.D., we didn't have
an official list of inspired books.
Up until then, each bishop had to
decide which books could be read
and treated as Scripture in his diocese.
He did so based on the information
which had been handed down to him
by his predecessor, so obviously
there was an oral tradition with
respect to which books were inspired
text. Because of geography and traditions,
various schools of theology rejected
certain books, while accepting others.
The heretical books such as the Gospel
of Thomas were universally rejected
every where but some of the inspired
books such as:
- Revelation
- John's Epistles, and
- Hebrews
were not part of the tradition in
some regions.
So it's not like all of a sudden
in 382 A.D. the Holy Spirit gave the
Church new revelation on the matter.
Rather the Holy Spirit led the Church
to finally canonize the Sacred Scriptures.
In doing so, the Bishops of the Council
of Rome drew on Sacred Tradition
to weigh:
- the content of the books, and
- discern their:
- authenticity
- inspiration, and
- widespread acceptance by
[orthodox|apostolic] churches
throughout Christendom.
John
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Billy
replied:
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Thank you for the reply.
Let my clarify my question. Whether or not we had a canon
at the time:
- In what year would you and I, if
we were alive then and were not
presbyters but just common people,
be able to read those letters
from the New Testament writers?
I ask because if it wasn't until
after the second, third, or fourth
century, I don't see how anyone could
argue against tradition . . . especially
with so many converts.
Billy
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John
replied:
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Hi, Bill —
I think you need to consider that common
folk were not particularly
literate until after the invention
of the printing press.
Secondly, before the printing press,
these letters were not readily available.
They could not be produced and were
not produced in mass.
John
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Eric
replied:
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Hi guys,
Still, the Scriptures were read in
the churches.
Obviously some letters would have
been accessible from the beginning.
St. Paul wrote his epistles to certain
churches intending them to be read
there, and so they were. Others,
for example Revelation, were a long
time before they achieved universal
exposure. Certainly some lay people
heard some books read in the first
century shortly after they were written.
When some lay people would have heard
all New Testament books, or lay people
in all communities heard all New
Testament books, I don't know either.
Certainly, we didn't have a situation
where everyone could whip out their
Bibles each morning and study them.
On the other hand, it was a very
oral culture and they could have
memorized the Scriptures orally (the
Jews certainly did). This does,
in part, support the idea of tradition (so do several Scriptures, such as
2 Thessalonians 2:15, or the fact
that when the Word of God is spoken
of, it refers either to the person
of Jesus or to oral preaching).
Eric
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Mary
Ann replied:
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Hi, Billy —
There were huge manuscript factories,
publishing 100's of copies of books.
Probably the Christians couldn't
take much advantage of them while
under persecution, but book distribution
was pretty widespread, and the people
were more literate than they later
became.
There is some evidence that they
actually had books at the time of
the Apostles, not just scrolls. The
whole area of the Mediterranean was
very developed. It took three days
for a letter to get from Rome to
Jerusalem, faster than now, I am
sure! Even Jesus' home territory
had a large population and ten new
cities being built during his lifetime.
The fiction of the [donkey—desert,
rural, poor] area comes from the
19th century rationalists with an
investment in making the area and
time primitive, or who projected
back into time what they saw there
in the 19th century (it
having been devastated and depopulated
by the Romans and then Muslims). Even the
so-called oral tradition,
which the Historical Critics had
going back generations, was only
something within the adult lifetime
of a person with a normal memory.
Mary Ann
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Billy
replied:
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Thanks.
I appreciate all your replies and
time.
Billy
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