Posted on 01/29/2014 4:53:38 PM PST by NKP_Vet
This little book about the Bible grew out of lectures which the writer delivered on the subject to mixed audiences. The lectures were afterwards expanded, and appeared in a series of articles in the Catholic press 1908-9, and are now with slight alterations reprinted. Their origin will sufficiently account for the colloquial style employed throughout. There is, therefore, no pretense either of profound scholarship or of eloquent language; all that is attempted is a popular and, as far as possible, accurate exposition along familiar lines of the Catholic claim historically in regard to the Bible. It is candidly controversial without, however, let us hope, being uncharitable or unfair. Friends had more than once suggested the reissue of the articles; and it appeared to the writer that at last the proper moment for it had come when the Protestant world is jubilating over the Tercentenary of the Authorized Version. Amidst the flood of literature on the subject of the Bible, it seemed but right that some statement, however plain and simple, should be set forth from the Catholic side, with the object of bringing home to the average mind the debt that Britain, in common with the rest of Christendom, owes to the Catholic Church in this connection. Probably the motive of the present publication will be best understood by a perusal of the following letter from the writer which appeared in the Glasgow Herald, 18th of March, 1911:
(Excerpt) Read more at tanbooks.com ...
**2. In the second place we shall do well to remember that the Bible was not written all at once, or by one man, like most other books with which we are acquainted, but that 1500 years elapsed between the writing of Genesis (the first Book of the Old Testament) and the Apocalypse or Revelation of St. John (the last Book of the New). It is made up of a collection of different books by different authors, forming, in short, a library instead of a single work, and hence called in Greek, “Biblia,” or “the Books.”**
From the Old Testament to the end of the New Testament.
Protestantism is a heresy. There, I said it, and anyone who believes otherwise is deceiving himself.
**3. Thus our Bibles as we have them today for reading are “translations”— that is, are a rendering or equivalent in English of the original Hebrew and Greek as it came from the pen of Prophet and Apostle and Evangelist.**
And also translated into Latin by St. Jerome.
**4. A last point must always be kept clearly in mind, for it concerns one of the greatest delusions entertained by Protestants and makes their fierce attacks on Rome appear so silly and irrational— the point, namely, that the Bible, as we have it now, was not printed in any language at all till about 1500 years after the birth of Christ, for the simple reason that there was no such thing as printing known before that date. **
And the first Bible printed was in Latin as far as I know.
“Protestantism is a heresy.”
Thanks for sharing your unsupported opinion, so we know what you think. I feel fulfilled now.
All true, but are you posting on the right thread?
The Bible is God’s work, and it’s Christian. I’m familiar with a lot of claims about it, but don’t have time to read this article right now, but I will. To be fair, though, it should mention how the Catholic Church opposed, under penalty of death, the common person reading God’s Word, and did execute an untold number for that reason.
Shows how the Catholic Church has determined and proclaimed through her infallible rulings just which books are actually part of Sacred Scripture,
Which infallible, thus indisputable canon took over 1400 years after the last book was written.
and how she has preserved and maintained the Bible throughout the centuries.
And often hindered the laity from reading it , while in modern times she has sanctioned Bible scholarship that is clearly liberal in crtical. aspects.
The fact the Bible is made a servant for Rome, out of which she tries to wrest specious support for her Traditions of men, rather than her doctrines being based upon the degree of Scriptural warrant, as being the supreme authority.
Meanwhile, I keep seeing this "we gave you the Bible" polemical statement but never get a clear answer to the question i keep asking regarding the reason/argument behind it:
Are you saying that being the instruments and stewards of Scripture requires or renders them the infallible authority on it, so that which they reject must be rejected?
If they will not answer this then they should stop with the "we gave you the Bible" assertion, as it is meaningless. Salvation was the last one to refuse to answer this, and you can be the first one to do so. Again, without screeds if possible. However, since you affirmed that your basis for assurance is Scripture, as is ours, and which is non-Catholic, then your answer may no reflect RC belief.
I’ve got two thousand years of history compared to your five hundred. How’s that for “unsupported opinion”?
“Rome didn’t make a binding definition of the canon of scripture until the Council of Trent in the 1500s.”
That is something of a half-truth. Someone reading your comments might come to the conclusion that the canon had not already been decided before Trent. It had. The canon was closed and preserved for well over a millennium before Trent. All Trent did was decide that no debate would any longer be tolerated within the Church on the issue. That’s why the canon was detailed.
“And even then, it left open for debate the question “Is the Apocrypha just good reading, or is it good for determining doctrine?””
False. First, why are you quoting Cajetan? He is not Trent. He was merely one man with views all his own. He also died a decade before Trent opened. His opinion is meaningless. Second, post for us the source where you got this Cajetan quote from. Why does it seem to appear only on anti-Catholic websites - especially on one banned here at FR?
Second, look at your claim, “Is the Apocrypha just good reading, or is it good for determining doctrine?” You’re actually claiming the Catholic Church would use the term “Apocrypha” in exactly the same way you do in regard to books we call Deuterocanonicals?
I don’t know about everyone else, but God himself gave me the bible. Another thing he gave me is his only son to die for my sins on the cross. How great is that!? I believe in Jesus, and that he is who he says he is. I am saved by faith through his grace, and I don’t even have to worry about confessing to a man in a booth who has zero power to forgive sins.
I don’t know if it’s because I’m getting older and wiser, but the wolves in sheep’s clothing are getting easier to spot.
“I’ve got two thousand years of history compared to your five hundred. How’s that for “unsupported opinion”?”
1. God has no grandchildren. Only children. Your underlying premise is foolish and doesn’t support your truth claim.
2. Heresy isn’t based on time.
3. Every Christian is part of the body, bride and assembly of Christ - conceived in the heart of the Father before the foundations of eternity, purchased with His blood in time and joint heirs with Him.
4. Much of the history you claim covered periods of heresy, corruption and sin.
Your unsupported claim falls far short of what He is all about. Why so earthly?
It is all about Him. It is all about His glory. His sacrifice. His exaltation.
Wanna see heresy? How ‘bout a guy that equates the Bible with the Koran:
(oh, did I mention it’s the Pope)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlqgL-hAC-M#t=89
The money quote:
“Sharing our experience in carrying that cross, to expel the illness within our hearts, which embitters our life: it is important that you do this in your meetings. Those that are Christian, with the Bible, and those that are Muslim, with the Quran. The faith that your parents instilled in you will always help you move on.”
Care to explain what your leader is talking about? Do you agree with the Pope that the Koran will take you to same place that the Bible will?...and could you define heresy?
The Catholic Church, once it decided in the 3rd Century what books would be in the Bible, has the same Bible today as then. It wasn’t until Luther came along that any books of the Bible that had been considered inspired word of God were taken out of the Bible.
So it is not a case of Catholics added books to the Bible. This statement is impossible. Catholics were here before any Protestant denomination. Protestants removed books from the Bible, books that for 1500 years had been considered the inspired word of God. Unless you subscribe to a hidden church theory, it is impossible to not acknowledge these facts. And ask yourself, why would God allow His church to be hidden when He tells us not to “Hide our light under a bushel”? That makes no sense either.
“To be fair, though, it should mention how the Catholic Church opposed, under penalty of death, the common person reading God’s Word, and did execute an untold number for that reason.”
Show me the law. I dare you to show me the law from a Catholic ecumenical council or pope which says that the Church “opposed, under penalty of death, the common person reading God’s Word”. Show it to me. What you’re claiming is an outright falsehood, a fabrication, and I DARE YOU TO SHOW ME EVEN ONE ECUMENICAL COUNCIL OR ONE POPE who EVER said people should be put to death for reading the Bible.
Now, for you to prove your claim you must provide the following evidence:
1) You’re making a claim about a law, or a canon law, even if you don’t use the term, for you are claiming it had the force of law. After all people could be threatened with the loss of their very lives unless the law was behind it somehow. You had better post a law or canon law then.
2) It had better say the following: COMMON MEN can be or will be EXECUTED for READING God’s Word. Now, the COMMON MAN was not a heretic so your proof should not in any way be related to heresy or even it prosecution. Don’t like that? Tough. Name for me anyone who was ever executed for translating a Bible by the Catholic Church. (The answer is no one ever was).
3) If this was a Catholic practice, or something that could be laid at the feet of the Catholic Church, a huge body spread through many countries, then it had better be something that is representative of Catholic teaching and practice for many places and many times. In other words, a particular bishop’s opinion is meaningless. What the Bishop of East Podunk thought is meaningless toward your claim. What a local synod did or wanted to do is meaningless toward your claim. What a regional council did was meaningless toward your claim.
When you fail, and you will, I suggest you think long and hard about spreading fabrications on the internet. And don’t think for a second that my demanding you present evidence is the problem. You problem is you have no evidence for your claim.
“The Catholic Church, once it decided in the 3rd Century what books would be in the Bible,”
Ah, I hear the arrogant rooster crowing that he makes the sun rise...
mouth-breathing, inbred, Protestant morons [all], I'm sure you're thinking...
“That is something of a half-truth. Someone reading your comments might come to the conclusion that the canon had not already been decided before Trent. It had.”
But notice you provide no proof for this, just an assertion. This is because there is no evidence for your claim, but only evidence against it. Actually, in the West, the consensus is that what we call the apocrypha today was only useful for reading “for edification of morals,” but not for establishing doctrine. In fact, even of those who called the apocrypha scripture, or canonical, they still maintained this important distinction.
Observe:
Athanasius on the apocrypha:
“But for the sake of greater exactness I add this also, writing under obligation, as it were. There are other books besides these, indeed not received as canonical but having been appointed by our fathers to be read to those just approaching and wishing to be instructed in the word of godliness: Wisdom of Solomon, Wisdom of Sirach, Esther, Judith, Tobit, and that which is called the Teaching of the Apostles, and the Shepherd. But the former [standard new and old testament canon], my brethren, are included in the Canon, the latter being merely read.” (Thirty-Ninth Festal Epistle, A.D. 367.)
Rufinus on the Apocrypha:
“But it should be known that there are also other books which our fathers call not ‘Canonical’ but ‘Ecclesiastical:’ that is to say, Wisdom, called the Wisdom of Solomon, and another Wisdom, called the Wisdom of the Son of Syrach, which last-mentioned the Latins called by the general title Ecclesiasticus, designating not the author of the book, but the character of the writing. To the same class belong the Book of Tobit, and the Book of Judith, and the Books of the Maccabees. In the New Testament the little book which is called the Book of the Pastor of Hermas (and that) which is called the Two Ways, or the Judgment of Peter; all of which they would have read in the Churches, but not appealed to for the confirmation of doctrine. The other writings they have named ‘Apocrypha.’ These they would not have read in the Churches. These are the traditions which the Fathers have handed down to us, which, as I said, I have thought it opportune to set forth in this place, for the instruction of those who are being taught the first elements of the Church and of the Faith, that they may know from what fountains of the Word of God their draughts must be taken” (Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1953), Rufinus, Commentary on the Apostles’ Creed 36, p. 557-558.).
Jerome on the Apocrypha
“These instances have been just touched upon by me (the limits of a letter forbid a more discursive treatment of them) to convince you that in the holy scriptures you can make no progress unless you have a guide to shew you the way...Genesis ... Exodus ... Leviticus ... Numbers ... Deuteronomy ... Job ... Jesus the son of Nave ... Judges ... Ruth ... Samuel ... The third and fourth books of Kings ... The twelve prophets whose writings are compressed within the narrow limits of a single volume: Hosea ... Joel ... Amos ... Obadiah ... Jonah ... Micah ... Nahum ... Habakkuk ... Zephaniah ... Haggai ... Zechariah ... Malachi ... Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel ... Jeremiah also goes four times through the alphabet in different metres (Lamentations)... David...sings of Christ to his lyre; and on a psaltry with ten strings (Psalms) ... Solomon, a lover of peace and of the Lord, corrects morals, teaches nature (Proverbs and Ecclesiastes), unites Christ and the church, and sings a sweet marriage song to celebrate that holy bridal (Song of Songs) ... Esther ... Ezra and Nehemiah.
You see how, carried away by my love of the scriptures, I have exceeded the limits of a letter...The New Testament I will briefly deal with. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John ... The apostle Paul writes to seven churches (for the eighth epistle - that to the Hebrews - is not generally counted in with the others) ... The Acts of the Apostles ... The apostles James, Peter, John and Jude have published seven epistles ... The apocalypse of John ...I beg of you, my dear brother, to live among these books, to meditate upon them, to know nothing else, to seek nothing else (Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1953, Volume VI, St. Jerome, Letter LIII.6-10).
As, then, the Church reads Judith, Tobit, and the books of Maccabees, but does not admit them among the canonical Scriptures, so let it also read these two volumes (Wisdom of Solomon and Eccesiasticus) for the edification of the people, not to give authority to doctrines of the Church...I say this to show you how hard it is to master the book of Daniel, which in Hebrew contains neither the history of Susanna, nor the hymn of the three youths, nor the fables of Bel and the Dragon...(Ibid., Volume VI, Jerome, Prefaces to Jerome’s Works, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs; Daniel, pp. 492-493).
Let her treasures be not silks or gems but manuscripts of the holy scriptures...Let her begin by learning the psalter, and then let her gather rules of life out of the proverbs of Solomon...Let her follow the example set in Job of virtue and patience. Then let her pass on to the gospels...the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles...let her commit to memory the prophets, the heptateuch, the books of Kings and of Chronicles, the rolls also of Ezra and Esther. When she has done all these she may safely read the Song of Songs...Let her avoid all apocryphal writings, and if she is led to read such not by the truth of the doctrines which they contain but out of respect for the miracles contained in them; let her understand that they are not really written by those to whom they are ascribed, that many faulty elements have been introduced into them, and that it requires infinite discretion to look for gold in the midst of dirt (Ibid., Letter CVII.12).
What the Savior declares was written down was certainly written down. Where is it written down? The Septuagint does not have it, and the Church does not recognize the Apocrypha. Therefore we must go back to the book of the Hebrews, which is the source of the statements quoted by the Lord, as well as the examples cited by the disciples...But he who brings charges against me for relating the objections that the Hebrews are wont to raise against the story of Susanna, the Song of the Three Children, and the story of Bel and the Dragon, which are not found in the Hebrew volume, proves that he is just a foolish sycophant...The apostolic men use the Hebrew Scripture. It is clear that the apostles themselves and the evangelists did likewise. The Lord and Savior, whenever He refers to ancient Scripture, quotes examples from the Hebrew volumes...We do not say this because we wish to rebuke the Septuagint translators, but because the authority of the apostles and of Christ is greater...”(The Fathers of the Church (Washington: Catholic University, 1965), Volume 53, Saint Jerome, Against Rufinus, Book II.27, 33, pp. 151, 158-160).
Cardinal Cajetan calls them not “canonical for the confirmation of the faith,” but “canonical” only in a certain sense for the “edification of the faithful.”
“Here we close our commentaries on the historical books of the Old Testament. For the rest (that is, Judith, Tobit, and the books of Maccabees) are counted by St. Jerome out of the canonical books, and are placed amongst the apocrypha, along with Wisdom and Ecciesiasticus, as is plain from the Protogus Galeatus. Nor be thou disturbed, like a raw scholar, if thou shouldest find anywhere, either in the sacred councils or the sacred doctors, these books reckoned as canonical. For the words as well of councils as of doctors are to be reduced to the correction of Jerome. Now, according to his judgment, in the epistle to the bishops Chromatius and Heliodorus, these books (and any other like books in the canon of the Bible) are not canonical, that is, not in the nature of a rule for confirming matters of faith. Yet, they may be called canonical, that is, in the nature of a rule for the edification of the faithful, as being received and authorised in the canon of the Bible for that purpose. By the help of this distinction thou mayest see thy way clearly through that which Augustine says, and what is written in the provincial council of Carthage.” (Cardinal Cajetan, “Commentary on all the Authentic Historical Books of the Old Testament,” cited by William Whitaker in “A Disputation on Holy Scripture,” Cambridge: Parker Society (1849), p. 424)
Official prefaces to Latin translations of the scripture making the same distinction:
“At the dawn of the Reformation the great Romanist scholars remained faithful to the judgment of the Canon which Jerome had followed in his translation. And Cardinal Ximenes in the preface to his magnificent Polyglott Biblia Complutensia-the lasting monument of the University which he founded at Complutum or Alcala, and the great glory of the Spanish press-separates the Apocrypha from the Canonical books. The books, he writes, which are without the Canon, which the Church receives rather for the edification of the people than for the establishment of doctrine, are given only in Greek, but with a double translation.” ( B.F. Westcott, A General Survey of the History of the Canon of the New Testament (Cambridge: MacMillan, 1889), pp. 470-471.)
“False. First, why are you quoting Cajetan? He is not Trent. He was merely one man with views all his own.”
He’s a cardinal and is therefore more credible than some random Papist trying to rewrite history. There was no church decision of which he was rebelling against, but was merely sharing the historical and correct view of his day, a reality even shared in Latin translations of the Bible put forward by the Roman church.
“leading Bible scholars, including David Brown, Roger Oakland, Alan O’Reilly, D.A. Waite and others.”
Not a single one of those chumps is a “leading” Bible scholar. D.A. Waite is a KJV Only twit, for instance.
“Also included are chief curators from the British Library in London, Erasmus House in Belgium, and the William Tyndale Museum in Vilvoorde, where Tyndale himself was burnt at the stake.”
Which tells us nothing. Chief curators appearing in a video tells us nothing about the veracity of the main line of thought put forward in the video.
“But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed.” Galatians 1:8-9
2 John 1:9 Whosoever transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God. He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son. 10 If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed: 11 For he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds.
Please show where the apostles taught the assumption of Mary.
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