(… cont)
You said: “Those extra books were rejected as Scripture by a number of early church fathers including a bishop of Rome. So even the early church fathers were themselves divided on this issue.”
I say: Yes they were rejected by some but they were also accepted by many. So does that mean the canon is for each of us to decide or should we accept what the Sanhedrin decided in 90 A.D.? The fact is that we have no Ecumenical Christian council anywhere that affirms the Jewish and Protestant canon. We do have councils that affirm the pre-reformation canon. I will post more on this in the near future and will address the full story regarding St. Jerome and his view of the canon and I’ll throw in a quote from St. Augustine as well.
You said: “I do not believe you studied the issues that are involved indepth. There are many Protestant books which deal with the issue of the Canon and evidently your not aware of them at all. Evidently the RCC itself did not know what the OT Canon was until the Council of Trent where it was settled.”
I say: You assert that I’m misinformed because I’ve not read the same books that you’ve read and have not drawn the same conclusions that you have. I’ve studied the canon in enough depth to know what was considered inspired prior to the Council of Trent. The Council of Trent AFFIRMED the canon, it did not establish. The reaffirmation was necessary because Luther was trying to change what had been generally accepted for over a thousand years. I will make this clear by providing a list of Church councils that addressed the canon of scripture. In them I will show the consistency of the pre-reformation canon complete with dates and references.
You said: Your arguments is saying we can't know what Scripture is without the RCC. Rome gets to define the extent of Scripture and it's interpretation of it according to the RCC itself. Your presenting " Sola ecclesia " .
I say: This is not true. The RCC did not define the canon of scripture – God did and revealed it to us through the Church. The Councils of Rome, Hippo, and Carthage all affirmed the canon in the late 4th century. Why do you say “Rome gets to define the extent of Scripture” instead of Hippo, Carthage, or even the Sanhedrin?
You still have me confused about binding authority and your definition of the “Local Church”. I claim the Universal Church is the Pillar and Foundation of Truth. You claim it is the “Local Church”. By your reasoning then, the “Local Church” in Rome, Carthage, and Hippo all have a binding canon and it includes the Deuterocanonical books. Whereas in any other “Local Church” that did not define a canon, one is free to choose, as the Spirit leads them, their own canon and it will be a “binding” decision. Can you tell me then which “Local Church” Council (or even ecumenical council) has affirmed the Protestant canon?
I say: You need to distinguish which parts of the O.T. you are talking about. The canon most Protestants accept was the canon accepted by the Jews at the Council of Jamnia in 90 A.D. This canon, even to this day, is not accepted by all Jews, and was not the same as the collection of scripture used by the Jews of the Diaspora and quoted by Jesus and the Apostles. This is undeniable historical fact.
You misrepresented the facts. The OT Hebrew Scriptures were collected around the time of Ezra. I never stated Council of Jamnia for that at all. Your mention of that is irrelevent as I stated the OT Hebrew Canon was collected specifically in the 5th Cen. B.C. . You basically erected a strawman and did not deal with what I said.
Furthermore, by this time, the Holy Spirit was working mightily in this New Kingdom that Jesus established. Jesus gave his authority to his Apostles and the Church he established.
You beg the question with that. That has nothing to do with this specific issue. The question is dealing with the canon . And what the OT Canon of Israel was. The only conclusion I see if you do a red herring when you can't deal with the specific point of issue.
The Sanhedrin was no longer the ruling authority, the point very emphatically made with the destruction of the Temple, as foretold by Jesus and John. Why should the canon established by the Sanhedrin in 90 A.D. be binding on the disciples of Jesus the Christ?
That is a strawman argument and irrelevent as that is not what I stated at all. I claimed it was collected around the 5th cen. BC during the time of Erza . The fact is I never stated that it was the Sanhedrin in 90ad who determined the OT Hebrew canon for Israel ! In effect you misrepresented my position on this. Try and deal with my position and not your petty strawmen.
So when you make the claim that the O.T. was originally written in Hebrew, you need to clarify what scriptures you are talking about. At best all you can say is that the Hebrew scriptures of the O.T. were originally written in Hebrew and I fully agree with you on this.
I am refering to the OT Hebrew canon collected during the time of Erza in the 5th cen. BC . That is the OT Canon I claim was followed by Jesus and the Apostles.
I say: This is not true. You are misrepresenting the teaching of infallibility and I believe you are doing this intentionally. This is one of the most commonly misunderstood teachings of the Catholic Church so I will explain it in another post, along with the necessary corrections to your version of Liberious.
It is no wonder Protestants and EO reject Papal infallibilty. What I said was correct. There are no standard listing at all and is presently debated by RCC Scholars. All you willl do is deny he speak from the seat of Peter as you will do with each and every case I can bring up to show at times they teach contrary to the Christian faith in essential Christian doctrines. It will amount to you saying they were not speaking infallibly since what they taught on a key issue was heretical. All attempts to cover up Liberious the Bishop of Rome fail. All you will do is add more confusion to claimed infallibilty of the Bishop of Rome . In otherwords, you end up resulting in a position when even Roman Catholics dont know when he is specially infallibly or not .
I say: You claim six, but list seven, and then you don’t include the Council of Jerusalem in your total.
That was because the Apostles were at the Council of Jerusalem. And are stated to the the foundation in the Chuch in their teachings found in Scripture in Eph 2:20. Sola Scriptura deals with other the Apostles died off. And I consider the Council of Jerusalem in a special class all by itself. Whereas the Six Ecumentical Councils of the Church are not under those special circumstances.
And what do you mean by “affirm”?
I mean by it general agreement with it. But even the six excumetical councils I stated must subject itself to the sole infallibile authority of Scripture. These Councils are not equal in authority to Scripture and are subject to it.
Is there any particular distinction to be made between the authority of the Council of Jerusalem and the other Councils?
You said: Protestants affirm the first six ecumentical councils.Also, I’ll put good money that many Protestants would disagree with your statement that “Protestants affirm the first six ecumenical councils”. The truth is that teachings came out of some of these councils that many Protestants outright reject. That is why I’d like you to explain what you mean by “affirm”. I suspect you mean that you affirm they were ecumenical but still, pick and chose what you want to accept from them.
You just displayed your outright lack of study of Protestantism. What you said is outright false. By affirm I mean general agreement with. It is easy to refute what you stated. The late Dr. Charles Hodge stated " Protestants all receieve the doctrinal statements contained is what is called the Apostle's creed, and in those of Chalcedon, and of Constantinople, adopted A.D. 681. " And again he stated " The first six ecumentical councils gave no doctrinal decisions from which Protestants dissent. They, therefore, present no evidence of consent in those doctrines which are now peculiar to the Church of Rome. " ( Dr. Charles Hodge Systematic Theology, I , pg. 125 ) . I guess you wont deal with the actual position of Protestants on this matter.
I say: Not true. You reject tradition that you do not agree with. You teach dispensationalism and a “rapture” but this clearly does not trace back to the Apostles. If it did, we would have seen some mention of it in the Early Church as it would have been something handed down by the apostles. Instead, we see virtually nothing about it until the 1800s.
You are creating a strawman argument. And once again displays your ignorance of dispensational premillennialism and it's history. Dispensationalist claim that Premillennialism, its doctrine of ecclesiology and its doctrine on the rapture are " exegetically based " doctrines of Scripture and not unwritten traditions as you falsely stated. For a refutations of all that you stated I refer you to read and deal with several works which evidently your not aware of. These works are 1 ) The Theocratic Kingdom by George N.H. Peters. three volumes. 2 ) The Millennial Kingdom by Dr. John F. Walvoord . 3 ) The Rapture Question by Dr. John Walvoord. All you said is in fact irrelevent. I do affirm tradition but only those which is confirmed in Scripture. I reject unwritten traditions. My beliefs do not fall under unwritten traditions but rather are exegetically based doctrines of Scripture. There is a big difference in that. Try and be honest and deal with the issue.
You reject baptismal regeneration yet we know this was handed down by the Apostles because we see writings supporting it in the early Church. We see ABSOLUTELY NO writings that refute it and no writings that affirm what only a subset of Protestants believe until AFTER the reformation.
Baptismal regeneration is not an exegetically based doctrine. It is a tradition which contradicts a proper interpretation of Scripture. Remember we went over this and you cited less than 11 church fathers on this prior to 300 ad. So you dont want to overstate things .There is no evidence of tracing " baptismal regeneration " back to the Apostles themselves. Protestants claim they view on regeneration is exegetically based doctrine of Scripture and not unwritten tradition. Rome has not infallibly defined statements of Jesus or the Apostles not recorded in Scripture.
Perhaps it was a bit unfair for me to put some of the Reforming Fathers in list with some of the early Heretics. The point I’m trying to make is that a tradition of man usually has a name attached to it. Luther->Lutherans, Calvin->Calvinism, Darby->Darbyism. A teaching from the Universal Church doesn’t have a name attached to it.
It is still false what you said. Those men claimed that their beliefs were exegetically based doctrines of Scripture and not " unwritten traditions " . Luther, Calvin and Darby it is to be noted were Augustinian with regard to the doctrine of election and predestination. Luther and Calvin held to Augustines Amillennialism while Darby held to Premillennialism of the Premillennial church fathers such as Papias, Clement of Rome, Justin Martyr and others in the first 300 years of the Church. It also needs to be noted that Darby prior to being part of the Brethern movement was an Anglican. But all that is forgotten by you . It appears you have no idea of the theology of those men or their background and their theological positions.
I say: Even many Protestant scholars acknowledge these quotations. Interesting that you have time to write lengthy responses to my posts but don’t have time to address the list of quotes I’ve given.
That is a false claim your making. All Evangelical scholars will all agree that they are never quoted as Scripture. I refuted your one on heb 11 which was sufficient to show how far Roman Catholics go in their false claims. And I cited Survey of the Bible by Dr. William Hendriksen as exactly saying what I did. Why do you want to misrepresent Protestants ?
Nowhere in scripture is there a list of what the O.T. canon was, so to say that the N.T. refers to a very specifically defined canon is not true.
That again is misrepresentation. I never stated that it was. In effect your trying to create yet another strawman to knock down. That is a claim I never made at all and yet try to have it like that I did . I had claimed that it does refer specifically at times to specific books as Scripture. Next time deal with what I said and not attack a strawman.
The Early Church fathers refer numerous times to the Deuterocanonical books in their writings. Later I will provide some quotes from Protestant scholars who have concluded that the early church considered these writings inspired.
That is a false claim you made. Protestant Evangelicals state that the early church fathers themselves were divided on this issue. Some held it was part of the canon and some did not. I listed several examples of early church fathers on this. So don't want your time in trying to deceive me on this. Augustine held they were Scripture while Jerome did not. That alone refutes your claim completely.
Regarding only the original scriptures as being inspired…It sounds to me like you are backpedaling. First you say only the original writings, in the original language, written by the original author are inspired. Now you are claiming that derivatives come “very very close to what the originals were” and that within copies “we have God’s infallible inspired word”. But then you say “Inspiration only deals with the originals alone”. So which is it? If only the originals are inspired, and we have none of the “originals”, but only something “very very close”, does this mean we have nothing today that is inspired? I think we both can agree that the answer to this is no.
What I stated was correct and held by Protestants. I stated only the originals of the OT and NT are inspired by God. And not the copies or translations of them. On What the originals were would be within all the copies that we presently have today. Go look up works on textual issues since evidently your not understanding what is being said. I do believe our translations are very close to the originals. All Catholics and Protestants should have no issue on that at all. What we have today are copies and some which contain minor textual issues. The doctrine of inspiration only deals with the originals and not copies or translations as said before.
My point in this is to show that the Septuagint version, used by Jesus and the Apostles, and the rest of the Church, was and still is considered inspired scripture, translation or not.
The LXX was viewed as a translation only and nothing more. By extending inspiration to the LXX you are holding to LXX onlyism.
I say: Yes they were rejected by some but they were also accepted by many. So does that mean the canon is for each of us to decide or should we accept what the Sanhedrin decided in 90 A.D.? The fact is that we have no Ecumenical Christian council anywhere that affirms the Jewish and Protestant canon. We do have councils that affirm the pre-reformation canon. I will post more on this in the near future and will address the full story regarding St. Jerome and his view of the canon and I’ll throw in a quote from St. Augustine as well.
Here you misrepresented me. I never claimed the OT Canon was decided by the Sanhedrin in 70ad. That was a false claim you made with me yet again. Try and deal with my position on this and not strawmen. Your local councils are not ecumentcial and thus are not evidence of your claims. These local councils likewise never had the same canon listings either. The fact is not one of the seven ecumentical councils dealt with this point of issue. Don't waste your time posting of Augustine or Jerome with your errors. I have their writings themselves and wont ever be fooled or misled by the RCC on this.
I say: You assert that I’m misinformed because I’ve not read the same books that you’ve read and have not drawn the same conclusions that you have. I’ve studied the canon in enough depth to know what was considered inspired prior to the Council of Trent.
You only repeat the false claims of the RCC and not actual historical facts. If you studied the issues indepth you would not made the claims which you have done here.
The Council of Trent AFFIRMED the canon, it did not establish. The reaffirmation was necessary because Luther was trying to change what had been generally accepted for over a thousand years. I will make this clear by providing a list of Church councils that addressed the canon of scripture. In them I will show the consistency of the pre-reformation canon complete with dates and references.
That is yet another false claim and historical revisionism. As pointed out earlier there was no unanimous consent on the issue of the OT canon. As the early church fathers themselves were divided on this issue. The fact is Not one ecumentical council dealt with the issue of the canon. And are therefore not evidence of anything againist Protestants. Appealing to local councils is not evidence as they had no ecumentical authority. All I expect is historical revisionism yet again from you.
I say: This is not true. The RCC did not define the canon of scripture – God did and revealed it to us through the Church. The Councils of Rome, Hippo, and Carthage all affirmed the canon in the late 4th century. Why do you say “Rome gets to define the extent of Scripture” instead of Hippo, Carthage, or even the Sanhedrin?
Rome claims to define Scripture, the interpretation of Scripture and on what is tradition. That is sola ecclesia. Once again Hippo and Carthage were not ecumentical councils and had no authority in the universal church. And they did not have the same OT Canon listing as the Council of Trent to top all things off to what you said . You also created another misrepresentation. I never claimed the Sanhedrin collected and determined the OT Canon. You did not deal with my position on that. As stated before God alone determined Scripture and collected by the people of God to whom it was being written at each point in time. Meaning it was received as Scripture by the peoeple of God who first saw them and read it. I stated the OT Scripture was collected in the 5th cent. bc and not 90ad.