Yet another reason Catholics are confident in the New Testament books...

...is their confirmation by the bishops and popes.

Quick Reason:

After centuries of narrowing the list of books trusted to be used in the Liturgy the Church formally agreed upon the list of books in the New Testament at various councils attended by many bishops and approved by the Bishop of Rome.

Long Reason:

Certainly, the current list of New Testament writings neither fell from the sky with a bow and a message “From:  God” nor were picked overnight by the councils of the last fourth century.  The list of books in consideration had been narrowed considerably by generations of use within the liturgy.  However, as a Church that spanned the known world, more than common consensus was needed.  By the lend of the fourth century the Church was ready to make a decision.

The first council that appears to have the same list of New Testament books as we have today is the Council of Rome in 382.  A council in Hippo (North Africa) in 393 did the same and this council was affirmed at two councils in Carthage (also North Africa) in 397 and 419.

These councils didn’t close the canon; that didn’t technically happen until the Council of Trent in 1546.  However, they solidified within the Church the writings of the New Testament to be trusted as inspired.  It was no longer up to individual churches to maintain their own list; that era had passed. 

That the bishops and the pope confirmed the New Testament books with certainty gives Catholics confidence in them.

Yet another reason Catholics are confident in the New Testament books...

...is their usefulness in the liturgy.

Quick Reason:

From the first through the fourth centuries, local church communities maintained their own list of writings that agreed with apostolic tradition.  At first, the lists were significantly different but as time passed they became nearly identical until a final list was selected universally at the end of the fourth century.  These 27 books were selected precisely because they were consistently useful to congregations when read within the liturgy.

Long Reason:

More than 27 writings from the first century prove to not contradict the apostles’ teaching and local churches in the first and se  By the third and even more by the fourth century the lists kept by the various churches grew closer and closer together.  As time passed it became more and more clear which writings should be kept in the list and which should be set to the side.

cond century used a range of writings.

The main force behind these decisions was the liturgy.  The whole purpose of keeping a list of writings that were trusted by the church community was to know what to read at Mass.  Copies were extremely expensive and literacy was around 10% so the only use of the writings was in formation of clergy and in reading them in the liturgy.  As time went on, local churches identified which writings were really helpful to their congregations.  Those writings were kept while those that just weren’t all that useful in the context of the liturgy were more and more sidelined.

That the 27 book in the New Testament proved to be the best suited for the liturgy over hundreds of years is yet another reason Catholics are confident in them.

 

Yet another reason Catholics are confident in the New Testament books...

 ...is the consistency of the apostles' teaching.

Quick Reason:
 Many writings came out of the first century that claimed to be written by an apostle and/or to give accurate accounts of Jesus' life, his teachings, or how to be a Christian disciple.  Many of these writings were weeded out by the earliest Christians because they didn't jive with the apostles' actual teaching.  The apostles' founded local churches and each church kept their own list of writings to be read in the liturgy; thanks to the consistency of the apostles' teachings it was relatively easy to discard those writings that didn't agree even though churches couldn't communicate with each other easily (and had little incentive to respect another church's authority over their own).

Long Reason:
Many writings came from the first century including several Gospel accounts, teaching documents like the Didache, spiritual works like the Shepherd of Hermes, and countless letters by folks like Paul, Peter, James, John, Clement, and others were in wide circulation. Yet today nearly all Christians recognize 27 specific writings as “canon” (meaning “in the list”). Why did Paul's letter to the Romans make it but Clement's didn't? One reason is the consistency of the apostles' teaching.

Before the printing press a story was passed on orally before being written down and this is how it was for Christianity. The apostles went out, preached, and founded churches in all major cities in the known world in a very short amount of time. Thanks to what can only be attributed to efforts of the Holy Spirit, the apostles taught a consistent message even though they could only communicate in rudimentary ways if at all. This oral teaching began a tradition which the churches clung to.

As letters, Gospel accounts, and other writings became available these individual churches (headed by a bishop) took to reading them along with Old Testament passages in the liturgy. However, they wouldn't read just any writing, each bishop kept a list of what he felt were consistent with the apostles' oral preaching.

While not every church in the first few centuries kept the same list, the fact that the apostles taught the same message all across the known world made it possible for the 150+ Christian writings of the first century to be narrowed down and gave a concrete reason to exclude many of the writings.

This is yet another reason Catholics are confident in the canon of Scripture.

(Submitted to Catholic Bloggers Network Link-Up Blitz!)

Audio Talk: Bible Overview

This is a recording of a talk I gave to the 2013 Fast Track RCIA group last week.  We cover things like the structure of the Bible, some common misconceptions, how to read it and the like. Give it a listen and share your thoughts!

Listen to mp3.

Yet another reason Catholics are careful interpreting the Bible...

...is we must be consistent with the analogy of faith.

Before a word of what we know as the Bible today was written the apostles were traveling, preaching, establishing local churches, and teaching them. These traditions and the doctrinal decisions that have followed give us a framework of faith to operate within. Catholics have a great degree of latitude when reading and interpreting the Bible but there are lines that shouldn't be crossed.

For example, imagine discussing faith with a Jehovah's Witness who explains that they believe Jesus isn't the eternal begotten Son of God but that he was a normal human whom God adopted and that God will do the same for us. They may cite Matthew 24:36 which says the not the angels nor the Son know when the Second Coming is, only the Father knows or one of several other passages that seem to show Jesus having a lack of knowledge.

Of course we could reply that Jesus said “Before Abraham was born, I AM” (Jn 8:58) which is largely what got him killed. Jesus claimed particular divinity and eternal existence by claiming to be part of the divine name and existing before Abraham was even born.

Which interpretation is correct? Do we endlessly debate this verse and that verse? The beauty of tradition is that we can look to the “analogy of faith”. What has been believed from the earliest record and affirmed through the centuries? The Apostles' Creed affirms Jesus is God's “only Son our Lord”. The Council of Nicea in 325 says Jesus is part of the eternal Trinity, and the Council of Chalcedon in 451 spells out that Jesus is both 100% human and 100% divine. Jesus' eternal divinity is an enshrined and firm part of the Christian faith.

Rejecting one of these tenants of faith would be to reject the authority of the Church that defined them. Doing this, however, is to reject the authority of the very Church that discovered what books belong in the bible in the first place. If we believe the bible is absolutely true then we must believe it came from an infallible source (God working through the Church). If God worked through the Church infallibly to produce the Bible then there's no reason to believe God did not also work infallibly through the Church to produce the bits of faith we hold so dear.

This is yet another reason Catholics are so careful interpreting the Bible.

(Image Credit:  ElementOfPersuasion)

Yet another reason Catholics are careful interpreting the Bible...

...is our interpretation must agree with the whole of Scripture.

It’s very easy to read a passage of Scripture and immediately take away the meaning. It’s much harder to ensure that the meaning taken away agrees with the rest of Scripture. Take John 3:3-5 for example. Jesus says we must be born again; specifically born of “water and the Spirit”. How do we take this?

Many say we’re born again by making an altar call, saying a sinner’s prayer, or otherwise giving ourselves mentally to Jesus. Let’s see if we see birth and rebirth elsewhere in Scripture; maybe that’ll give us a clue.

Genesis 1 has both water and the Spirit and speaks of the creation (birth) of the world and all created things. Genesis 8 shows water flooding the earth and a dove (symbol of Holy Spirit) used to tell Noah the earth had been recreated (born again). Exodus 14 is yet another scene of the Spirit of God manipulating water to transform the Hebrew people into the Israelites.

In the New Testament, we see Jesus immediately after saying these words went to be baptized (Jn 3:22). St. Peter writes that the flood of Noah was a foreshadowing of baptism, and baptism saves us (1 Pt 3:21), linking the Old Testament passages of water and the Spirit above to baptism. St. Paul’s letter to Titus says that Jesus saved us through the “washing of rebirth” (Tit 3:5).

Catholics say we are born again and this happened at our baptism. We say this because every reference to how God births and rebirths has real water and the Holy Spirit and even the New Testament authors make it plain that baptism is the way we encounter a rebirth with real water and the Spirit.

That an interpretation must be consistent with the whole of Scripture is yet another reason Catholics are careful with biblical interpretation.

(Image Credit:  ElementOfPersuasion)

Yet another reason Catholics are careful interpreting the Bible...

...is we must think like the author and the audience.

In previous posts we looked at all four gospel accounts and saw how different audiences made for differences in the text. This is particularly important when reading New Testament letters. Imagine in my RCIA class one person struggles with Catholic teaching on Eucharist, another on Reconciliation, and a third with the sex abuse scandal. If I wanted to address their concerns privately, would I discuss all three issues with all three people? Would I also discuss the Trinity just to be thorough? No, with each individual I would focus on the topic they needed help with.

St. Paul and the other letter-writers did the same. The danger of forgetting this comes to light clearly when reading Romans 3:28 which says “For we hold that a man is justified by faith apart from works of law.” This passage is used by many non-Catholic Christians to support the notion that we’re saved by faith alone and not by works.

The difficulty of this reading (faith alone) is the same author, St. Paul, writes to the Philippians “work out your salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12), to the Galatians he writes “The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.” (Gal 5:6) and to the Corinthians he writes “if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.” (1 Cor 13:2).

It would seem the Romans needed to hear that they’re not saved by “works of the law”, which is a phrase St. Paul often uses to refer to Judaic tradition. They’re not saved by circumcision, kosher foods, and so on; they’re saved by faith in Jesus and Catholics heartily agree! We also agree we cannot take our salvation for granted as the Philippians did. We also agree that we cannot make faith so important that we forget to love as the Corinthians did. Catholics don’t say we’re saved by faith alone but by faith working through love, which is the fullest expression by Paul to the Galatians.

We haven’t even mentioned James 2:24 which specifically says we’re saved by works; not faith alone.

Reading one letter to one of my RCIA candidates wouldn’t give you my full belief system and doing the same to a biblical author is just as fruitless. This is yet another reason Catholics are careful when interpreting the Bible.

(Image Credit:  ElementOfPersuasion)

Yet another reason Catholics are careful interpreting the Bible...

...is many biblical books are different literary genres.

We unconsciously account for this in everyday life; we treat the news, blog posts, poetry, and email differently. We expect hyperbole in a poem and we expect straight facts in news. We expect barebones and relevant details in emails because we already know the person sending it and we’ve already talked through most of it before.

Then we sit down with the Bible and treat the whole thing the same way. We read the world was created in six days (Gen 1), that the entire world was flooded and only one family survived (Gen , and that we must eat Jesus’ body and blood (Jn 6). Then we decide either of it needs to be read like a newspaper with stark facts or all of it needs to be read like a poem full of allegory and hyperbole. Or, more likely, we pick and choose which bits we want to take in a literalist sense and which we want in a symbolic sense because it’s rare people believe the world was created in six-consecutive 24 hour periods and also believe Jesus is present in the Eucharist.

When we acknowledge that the Bible is like a library or a compendium of related but distinct writings then we can start to really get at what God’s trying to say through the human authors who wrote it.

That the authors God used to write the Bible used different literary styles is yet another reason Catholics are careful when interpreting the Bible.

(Image Credit:  ElementOfPersuasion)

Yet another reason Catholics say God cannot make a stone he cannot move...

..is that the statement argues against a straw man.

Straw man arguments take an easy-to-knock-down idea and claim an organization or person holds this idea. Saying “Catholics are wrong for worshiping Mary” is a straw man argument, we all agree idolatry is bad but Catholics don’t worship Mary. Saying “Opponents of homosexual marriage are wrong because they’re just bigots” is a straw man argument, the majority of opponents to homosexual marriage claim bigotry is wrong but oppose homosexual marriage out of love for natural law and what is most good for individuals and society.

Asking “Can God create a stone so heavy he can’t move it” is a straw man argument. On the surface it seems to ask “is God all powerful but it really asks “can God create a contradiction”. There’s a big difference because Christians say God operates within his nature and part of his nature is the absence of contradictions. In other words, the question tries to disprove God by forcing the Christian to admit God cannot create a contradiction; a claim Christians never made about God in the first place.

Christians believe God is omnipotent and all powerful, but he cannot contradict his nature. Basically, this means God can do anything “possible” but nothing “impossible”. Can God create everything out of nothing? Christians say yes, he can and did. Can God sin? No, God is the standard against which sin is measured. God sinning would be like saying something is both perfect and not perfect simultaneously. Can God make a 9-sided triangle? No, once something has not 3 sides it’s no longer a triangle. Can God make a stone so heavy even he can’t move it? No, it isn’t possible for such a stone to exist so God cannot make it; making it would cause a contradiction like a 9-sided triangle.

That the question at hand deals with an idea of omnipotence that Christians don’t claim God has is yet another reason Catholics say God cannot create a stone so heavy even he can’t move it.

Yet another reason Catholics say God cannot make a stone he cannot move...

...is the statement is nonsense.

“Clever” atheists sometimes try to disprove an omnipotent God by asking if he can make a stone so heavy not even he can lift it. If the answer is “yes” then it would seem God isn’t all-powerful because there can be something he can’t do (a rock he can’t lift). If the answer is “no” then it would seem God isn’t all-powerful because there’s something God cannot do (create the rock).

Isaac Asimov was once asked what would happen if an unstoppable force met an unmovable object. Asimov replied that by definition a universe that contains either of these cannot contain the other so the question is meaningless.

So too with the question about God’s omnipotence; on the surface the question of God making something he cannot move sounds clever but upon inspection it becomes nonsense.

We’ll look at this closer soon (since this really isn’t an answer) but this is yet another reason Catholics say God cannot create a stone he cannot lift.