Absurd. Where did you get these assertions from? Or are you now discounting the early fathers as well?
Are you reading opposing posts with actual sources? Your statements lead me to believe you are not.
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The New Testament was not decided upon until the late 4th century, at the Council of Rome, in the year 382. This collection of writings from the first century Christians was determined by this Council to be divinely inspired by God, the real author. Many other writings were considered, but were thrown out by the Catholic Church as not being the authentic Word of God. The interesting fact here is that this means for almost 400 years the Christians of those days had no Bible to refer to. Therefore, the Church that Jesus Himself had set up had to primarily transmit His Word orally (some rare individual manuscripts did exist, but were mainly limited to Churches, and not considered divinely inspired as sacred scripture until 382 AD), which is the beginning of the doctrine of Tradition. Absurd. Where did you get these assertions from? Or are you now discounting the early fathers as well? Are you reading opposing posts with actual sources? Your statements lead me to believe you are not. As usual, evidently whatever is necessary to support Rome is the criteria. Here he states, 1. “For almost 400 years the Christians of those days had no Bible to refer to.” 2. “Therefore, the Church that Jesus Himself had set up had to primarily transmit His Word orally.” 3. “Individual manuscripts did exist, but were mainly limited to Churches, and not considered divinely inspired as sacred scripture until 382 AD.” However, ► 1. The Roman Catholic polemical claim that she gave us the Bible — besides the fact that Rome is critically different than the NT church — would not even mean she is infallible or or otherwise posses assuredly veracity any more than it means the instruments, and discerner and stewards of Holy Writ (Rm. 3:2; 9:4.5) before them were. Which really makes his claims meaningless as regards yielding to Rome her required submission. ► 2. The “no Bible” claim must refer to an officially settled, indisputable canon in order to make a distinction between only having an unsettled body of Scripture before that. ► 3. The “no Bible” assertion cannot mean Christians were without all the books of Scripture for 400 years, as they were written and which discerning souls could recognize. And even in the time of Christ, rather than being primarily dependent on oral transmission of God's Word for 400 years, Christians had a generally settled body of Scripture by which to test truth claims before that, and in the light of such more were progressively established. Thus Scripture was the supreme authority. ► 4. It was less than 300 years after the last book was written that we have a complete NT canon listed, reflective of an earlier establishment, and that believers are exhorted to have a Bible (though many people were illiterate). ► 5. Not only were prior lists by council not infallible, but that the Decretum Gelasianum, upon which the list of books of Scripture said to be attested to as canonical by a Council of Rome under Pope Damasus I — who hired mobs which killed those opposed to his election — depends on, is questionable. . But if it is completely genuine, it further weakens the case (not there is one Scripturally) for the Assumption. ► 6. Rome actually did not have an officially settled, indisputable canon until after Luther died, (1546) over 1400 years after the last one was written (approx. 90A.D.). And doubts and dissent about books included NT ones. ► 7. The canon of Trent itself may be different (by one book) than that of early councils as Hippo (it is also a matter of discussion whether Trent actually closed the canon). ► 8. Having a generally established canon, laity was urged in the late 4th century to posses at least the NT. ► 9. That for many souls hearing the word of God preached was their source of faith does not negate the critical importance of the transcendent written word, or the supremacy of the Scriptures. ► 10. Finally, invoking the fact that some (a minority of the NT) of what became Scripture first only existed orally does not justify amorphous Catholic oral Tradition. • 1. The idea that being the instruments, discerners and stewards of writings as being Scripture requires or infers assured infallibility and required submission to that body, per Rome, would invalid the church itself as it began in dissent from those unto who “were committed the oracles of God.” “Who are Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; Whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen.” (Romans 9:4-5) • 2. The “had no Bible” claim must refer to an infallible complete canon, in contrast to an unsettled one, which means if dissent among Catholics in good standing, even primary scholars, continued then there was no completely settled canon, just one that was more substantially settled than before. • 3. Rather than “no Bible” inferring they had no established body of Scripture to refer to, the approx. 250 references to the OT in the New, plus early writings, (http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/e-catena) attest otherwise. While the canon was less generally settled in the 2nd c. than the 3rd, and 4th this does not mean Christians were without all the books of Scripture, which discerning souls could recognize. Even Irenaeus: in “Against Heresies” writes c. 180, “If any one, therefore, reads the Scriptures with attention, he will find in them an account of Christ, and a foreshadowing of the new calling (vocationis). For Christ is the treasure which was hid in the field, [Matthew 13:44] that is, in this world (for "the field is the world" [Matthew 13:38];...Thus, then, I have shown it to be, if any one read the Scriptures. For thus it was that the Lord discoursed with the disciples after His resurrection from the dead, proving to them from the Scriptures themselves "that Christ must suffer, and enter into His glory, and that remission of sins should be preached in His name throughout all the world." And the disciple will be perfected, and [rendered] like the householder, "who brings forth from his treasure things new and old." — http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103426.htm Moreover, the issue is not whether some (a minority of the NT) of the Bible first existed orally, while other books awaited establishment as being Scripture, but the supremacy of Scripture as the assured Word of God and transcendent standard for obedience and testing and establishing truth claims, as it is abundantly evidenced to be. • 4. It was less than 300 years after the last book was written that Athanasius of Alexandria ( 298 - 373) listed (c. 367) the complete New Testament canon of 27 books, and which reflects what was generally settled before that. • 5. Furthermore, the claim that the Council of Rome settled the canon depends upon the Decretum Gelasianum, the authority of which is disputed (among RC's themselves), based upon evidence that is was pseudepigraphical, being a sixth century compilation put together in northern Italy or southern France at the beginning of the 6th cent. More: http://www.tertullian.org/articles/burkitt_gelasianum.htm It contains a quote from Augustine, writing about 416, which the Roman Catholic Jurgens affirms a theory that the later editing was not dealing with the accepted canon. (Of course he also states “Cyprian, indeed, recognized that the Bishop of Rome held some kind of special and primatial position; but he had not thought of it as implying a universal jurisdiction.” (Jurgens, pp. 219-220) While Prot researcher James Swan says Jurgens is somewhat famous for passing along forged and fake documents like this one as if they were real. Yet if it is genuine, then it condemns (as part of larger condemnation) what is said to be “the first express witness in the West to a genuine assumption,” that of comes to us in “an apocryphal Gospel, the Transitus Beatae Mariae of Pseudo–Melito.” (Juniper Carol, O.F.M. ed., Mariology, Vol. l (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1957), p. 149) Note that Rome has made much use of forgeries to established herself. Eusebious is also held as dubious. Finally on this issue, it is also of note that Damascus 1, the bishop of Rome under whom the council of Rome at issue met, was the first pope to enlist the sword of men in order to secure his papal seat*. • 6. Regardless if the Decretum Gelasianum doubtful, the council of Rome was not infallible, nor those which also provided lists before Luther, as in reality an infallible complete canon then RCs had none for over 1400 years (1500 by his reckoning) after the last one was written. For contrary to the often parroted claim that the Council of Rome (382) approved an infallible canon, Roman Catholic teaching states Trent provided the “first infallible and effectually promulgated declaration on the Canon of the Holy Scriptures” (http://www.ewtn.com/library/councils/trent4.htm, and see here). For the Council of Rome was not an ecumenical council, and as the Catholic Encyclopedia states also, "only the decisions of ecumenical councils and the ex cathedra teaching of the pope have been treated as strictly definitive in the canonical sense.” — http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07790a.htm And the generally settled but non-infallible officially unsettled status of the canon is manifest by the fact that until Trent dispute about books continued down through the centuries and right into Trent, and which included doubts about certain NT books: On the eve of the Reformation, it was not only Luther who had problems with the extent of the New Testament canon. Doubts were being expressed even by some of the loyal sons of the Church. Luther's opponent at Augsburg, Cardinal Cajetan, following Jerome, expressed doubts concerning the canonicity of Hebrews, James, 2 and 3 John, and Jude. Of the latter three he states, "They are of less authority than those which are certainly Holy Scripture."63 The Catholic Encyclopedia confirms this saying that “he seemed more than three centuries in advance of his day in questioning the authenticity of the last chapter of St. Mark, the authorship of several epistles, viz., Hebrews, James, II Peter, II and III John, Jude...”— http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03145c.htm And which is in addition to the OT deuterocanonical books. As Hubert Jedin, Catholic Church historian and author of the most comprehensive description of the Council, states, Tobias, Judith, the Book of Wisdom, the books of Esdras, Ecclesiasticus, the books of the Maccabees, and Baruch are only "canonici et ecclesiastici" and make up the canon morum in contrast to the canon fidei. These, Seripando says in the words of St. Jerome, are suited for the edification of the people, but they are not authentic, that is, not sufficient to prove a dogma. Seripando emphasized that in spite of the Florentine canon the question of a twofold canon was still open and was treated as such by learned men in the Church. (Hubert Jedin, Papal Legate At The Council Of Trent (St Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 1947), pp. 270-271) More. “While Seripando abandoned his view as a lost cause, Madruzzo, the Carmelite general, and the Bishop of Agde stood for the limited canon, and the bishops of Castellamare and Caorle urged the related motion to place the books of Judith, Baruch, and Machabees in the "canon ecclesiae." From all this it is evident that Seripando was by no means alone in his views. In his battle for the canon of St. Jerome and against the anathema and the parity of traditions with Holy Scripture, he was aligned with the leaders of a minority that was outstanding for its theological scholarship.” (ibid, 281-282; https://aomin.org/aoblog/index.php?blogid=1&query=cajetan) Also, among other authorities, different canons were sanctioned by the Council in Trullo (Quinisext Council) in 692 and the seventh Ecumenical Council (787) In the Latin Church, all through the Middle Ages [5th century to the 15th century] we find evidence of hesitation about the character of the deuterocanonicals. There is a current friendly to them, another one distinctly unfavourable to their authority and sacredness, while wavering between the two are a number of writers whose veneration for these books is tempered by some perplexity as to their exact standing, and among those we note St. Thomas Aquinas. Few are found to unequivocally acknowledge their canonicity. The prevailing attitude of Western medieval authors is substantially that of the Greek Fathers. The chief cause of this phenomenon in the West is to be sought in the influence, direct and indirect, of St. Jerome's depreciating Prologus (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03267a.htm) ^ And just prior to Trent, The Polyglot Bible (1514) of Cardinal Ximenes separated the Apocrypha from the canon of the Old Testament and soon received papal sanction. Therefore, as shown in previous debates, what can be said is that the Roman Catholic canon was largely settled early by the time of Carthage, but not without disagreement by notable Catholics scholars until Trent settled the issue, when it provided the “first infallible and effectually promulgated declaration on the Canon of the Holy Scriptures,” (The Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent (Rockford: Tan, 1978), Fourth Session, Footnote #4, p. 17; http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03267a.htm; cf. New Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. II, Bible, III (Canon), p. 390) (More Therefore, if for almost 400 years the Christians of those days had no Bible due to the canon being unsettled, then they still had none till after Luther's died in 1546. The canon of Trent was issued in reaction to Martin Luther and the Reformation, after a vote of 24 yea, 15 nay, with 16 abstaining (44%, 27%, 29%) requiring submission to it. • 7. Moreover, not only was the canon not settled before Trent, with Trent arguably following a weaker scholarly tradition in pronouncing the apocryphal books to be inspired, but it is a matter of debate whether the canon of Trent is exactly the same as that of Carthage and other councils. It is also of note that even Catholics discuss whether Trent actually closed the canon so that Rome could never affirm another (as the generally held EO canon is slightly larger than Trent's), versus only condemning those who “receive not, as sacred and canonical, the said books entire with all their parts, as they have been used to be read in the Catholic Church, and as they are contained in the old Latin vulgate edition” (versions of which were not uniform). — http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=399581 And a page to see on Luther and the canon is here. • 8. Contrary to the idea of the laity not having personal access to Scripture, or it being superfluous in the light of oral tradition, John Chrysostom (347–407) exhorted the laity to "get you at least the New Testament,," and in Matthew he refers to hearing of the Scriptures, he also chastens the laity for presuming "the reading of the divine Scriptures" appertains to such as monks, while they needed it more, and marginalizing them was" far worse than not reading." The context of the exhortation in Ephesians is the home life, and he says not "hear" but "study the Scriptures," while in Col. 3:16 he is exhorting them to "get you at least the New Testament, the Apostolic Epistles, the Acts, the Gospels, for your constant teachers..." for "the reading of the Scriptures and that not to be done lightly, nor in any sort of way, but with much earnestness." More
For, tell me, who of you that stand here, if he were required, could repeat one Psalm, or any other portion of the divine Scriptures? ...10. But what is the answer to these charges? "I am not," you will say, "one of the monks, but I have both a wife and children, and the care of a household." Why, this is what has ruined all, your supposing that the reading of the divine Scriptures appertains to those only, when you need it much more than they.
Let it dwell in you,” he saith, “richly,” not simply dwell, but with great abundance. Hearken ye, as many as are worldly, and have the charge of wife and children; how to you too he commits especially the reading of the Scriptures and that not to be done lightly, nor in any sort of way, but with much earnestness... Tarry not, I entreat, for another to teach thee; thou hast the oracles of God. No man teacheth thee as they; for he indeed oft grudgeth much for vainglory’s sake and envy. Hearken, I entreat you, all ye that are careful for this life, and 301procure books that will be medicines for the soul. If ye will not any other, yet get you at least the New Testament, the Apostolic Epistles, the Acts, the Gospels, for your constant teachers... This is the cause of all evils, the not knowing the Scriptures. We go into battle without arms, and how ought we to come off safe? - Homily IX. Colossians iii. 16, 17
If thus we regulate ourselves, and attentively study the Scriptures, in most things we shall derive instruction from them. And thus shall be able to please God, and to pass through the whole of the present life virtuously, and to attain those blessings which are promised to those that love Him, of which God grant that we may all be counted worthy, through the grace and lovingkindness of our Lord Jesus Christ, with Whom, together with the Holy Ghost, be unto the Father, glory, power, and honor, now, and ever, through all ages. Amen. More: http://www.saintjonah.org/chrysostom_scripture.htm On reliance On BIBLE READING BY THE LAITY, RESTRICTIONS ON (Schaff) • 9. As seen in the above exhortation, that for many souls hearing the word of God preached was their source of faith does not negate the critical importance of the transcendent written word, or the supremacy of the Scriptures as the standard for testing and establishing Truth claims, and by conformity and complementarity to which more scriptures were added. • 10. Finally, invoking the fact that some (a minority of the NT) of what became Scripture first only existed orally does not justify amorphous Catholic oral Tradition (even though the Latin and Byzantine Rites partly disagree on it), as the former were not ancient thousand year old legends but known truths which were being contemporaneously preached and could be and normally were written if they were the word of God, while the later can even by an over 1700 year old ancient legend as the Assumption Of Mary that is not even attested to by early fathers |
* On Pope Ÿ Liberius's death September 24 A.D. 366, violent disorders broke out over the choice of a successor. A group who had remained consistently loyal to Liberius immediately elected his deacon Ursinus in the Julian basilica and had him consecrated Bishop, but the rival faction of Felix's adherence elected Damasus, who did not hesitate to consolidate his claim by hiring a gang of thugs, storming the Julian Basilica in carrying out a three-day massacre of the Ursinians. On Sunday, October 1 his partisans seized the Lateran Basilica, and he was there consecrated. He then sought the help of the city prefect (the first occasion of a Pope in enlisting the civil power against his adversaries), and he promptly expelled Ursinus and his followers from Rome. Mob violence continued until October 26, when Damasus's men attacked the Liberian Basilica, where the Ursinians had sought refuge; the pagan historian Ammianus Marcellinus reports that they left 137 dead on the field.
Damasus was now secure on his throne; but the bishops of Italy were shocked by the reports they received, and his moral authority was weakened for several years....
Damasus enjoy the favor of court and aristocracy,... His magnificent lifestyle and hospitality help to break down the anti-Christian prejudices of upper-class pagan families..
Damasus was indefatiable in promoting the Roman primacy, frequently referring to Rome as 'the apostolic see' and ruling that the test of a creed's orthodoxy was its endorsement by the Pope. In 378, he persuaded the government to recognize the holy see as a court of first instance and also of appeal for the Western episcopate... In tune with his ideas, Theodosius 1 (379-95) declared (February 27, 380) Christianity the state religion in that form from which the Romans had once [imagined they] received from St. Peter, and Damasus of Rome and Peter of Alexandria now professed; for Damasus this primacy was not based on decisions of synods, as were the claims of Constantinople, but exclusively on his [presumption of] being the direct successor of St. Peter and so the rightful heir of the promises made to him by Christ (Mt. 16:18) [although many "church fathers"did not interpret that text as such].
This [false claim to] succession gave him a unique [presumptuous claim to] judicial power to bind and loose, and the assurance of this infused all his rulings on church discipline. J. N. D. Kelly, “The Oxford Dictionary of Popes” (Hardcover), pp. 32,34