Steve Finnell invited me to visit his blog, A Christian View, a
few days ago, which was very kind of him.
His blogs are extensive, so I’ve only had a chance to read a bit of
them. The first one that I have even begun to had a chance
to actually do justice to was “The Exact
Truth”, posted April 30.
Unfortunately I must respectfully disagree, not with his
knowledge of Scriptural text, but with his conclusions
concerning Scripture. There’s a question
that is being missed. It’s one that most
people don’t think to ask themselves: where
did the Bible come from? I don’t mean
the “inspired by God” sort of come from, but how did such diverse writings as
Leviticus and Revelation come to be gathered into the work that Christians call
the Bible?
In truth, if we are to take every statement about Scripture
that occurs in the New Testament as evidence that Scripture alone is enough for
Christian faith, then Christians would need to abandon that very part of the
Bible. What we call the New Testament
did not exist at the time that Jesus and his followers spoke and wrote, nor did
it exist as a collected work for centuries after. They had only the Old Testament – the stories and letters of the New Testament era had yet to be written, sifted through, and
selected to be the authoritative works, or canon, of the Good News. Each reference to Scripture that occurs in Scripture
itself is a reference to the Old Testament.
The King James Bible did not appear at Pentecost.
John himself tells us that not everything concerning
Christ’s work is in Scripture in John 21:25, saying “There are also many other
things that Jesus did, but if these were to be described individually, I do not
think the whole world could contain the books that could be written.” Indeed, even if they had been written down,
a large part of the population could not have read the books, let alone afford
them since they were not as blessed with literacy or ability to buy books
as we are. That is why the New
Testament letters repeatedly describe a process of oral teaching and traditions: “And what you have heard from me through many
witnesses entrust to faithful people who will have the ability to teach others
as well.” (2 Tim 2:2); “Therefore, brothers, stand firm and hold fast to the
traditions that you were taught, either by an oral statement or by a letter of
ours.”(2 Thes 2:15); “Thus faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard
comes through the word of Christ.” (Rom 10:17).
Lacking a written New Testament those first years, it was a preaching
church: “They devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles and to the
communal life; to the breaking of bread and to the prayers.” (Acts 2:42). That does not mean, of course, that there was
no study of the Old Testament - indeed, those are the Scriptures they searched - and with about 80% of the quotations of
the New Testament coming from the Greek Septuagint, we've been left with a good idea of
what the Old Testament they studied looked like.
The New Testament writers themselves quoted from sources
outside of the Old Testament: Jude
quotes Enoch, a book considered canonical by only a few, in verses 14 and 15
when he says “Enoch, of the seventh generation from Adam, prophesied also about
them when he said, “Behold, the Lord has come with his countless holy ones to
execute judgment on all and to convict everyone for all the godless deeds that
they committed and for all the harsh words godless sinners have uttered against
him.”” Jude also recounts a dispute
between the archangel Michael and the devil over the body of Moses, yet there
is no written record of this story – it seems to come from Jewish tradition
(Jude 9).
There is nothing in Holy Writ that says that it ALONE is
sufficient. And in the end, somebody had to
make the decision and declaration that THESE writings and THESE alone
constitute the New Testament and declare that no more would be added. In 367, Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria,
listed the 27 books we know as the New Testament and used the word “canonized”
in regard to them. The Council of Rome
of Pope Damascus I in 382 issued a list identical to it, and the commissioning
of the Latin Vulgate edition of the Bible by the same pope fixed those 27 books
in the mind of Christianity as the New Testament for all the centuries since
then. Even Luther’s opinion that James
was “an epistle of straw” could not change that. The Bible of Christianity did not come first
– the Christian Church did.
The Bible is indeed inspired by God and many more should be reading it and paying attention to its teaching than to the seemingly endless adventures of Lindsay Lohan, especially in this multi-media age. But if each one of us could truly interpret
it clearly with no need of anything or anyone else then Christianity would not
have fragmented into thousands of pieces, each piece built on someone’s
interpretation of the Bible.
All quotes
from Scripture are from The New American Bible.
Because that’s the version I have that has big print…
