From: eje@irenaeus.mlo.dec.com (Eric James Ewanco)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Inerrancy _ Jere 36
Date: 23 Aug 92 23:39:36 GMT
Reply-To: ewanco@kalvin.enet.dec.com
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation

> In article <Aug.21.00.26.38.1992.14231@athos.rutgers.edu>, tim@mal-s1.gatech.edu (Tim Shelling) writes:
> From: tim@mal-s1.gatech.edu (Tim Shelling)
> Subject: Re: Inerrancy _ Jere 36
> Date: Fri, 21 Aug 92 00:26:38 GMT+5:00
> Organization: Georgia Tech Res. Inst./Modeling & Analysis Lab

> In <Aug.18.01.47.08.1992.26576@aramis.rutgers.edu> dlhpfm!dlh@ncoast.org 
(daniel lance herrick) writes:

Actually he reposted what I posted, so don't blame him for my message!

> >The fact is, there is only one reason that Scripture is inerrant.

> >The Church declared it the inerrant and inspired written Word of
> >God around 425 A.D.  ...  How do we trust the authority of the
> >Church? Because Christ founded it and gave it the authority to make
> >such decisions.

> And where is this authority given?
> And who is "the Church"?

The Church that was built by the apostles and guarded Christian doctrine
during the early years (and even now) -- the Catholic church.

> >For me, there the argument ends.  Anything else, as clh says, is
> >pulling rabbits out of thin air.

> Ok, but you'ree still pulling rabbits out of thin air. After all,
> "we" Christians are a part of the Church, are we not? So the
> authority was given to us, correct?

Obviously people differ on this matter.  The authority is not given to
individuals -- 2 Peter 1:20, no prophesy of Scripture is a matter of
personal interpretation.  Rather, as Scripture records, the leaders of the
church are given charge of preserving correct doctrine, and the Catholic
church believes that nothing may be believed unless all of the leaders of
the church -- the bishops -- agree that it is Apostolic Tradition, that is,
that what is believed was taught by the Apostles.

> But even if you don't agree with that, then let me pursue this issue
> of the Church declaring the Scriptures as authority. Do you know the
> three "Tests" for determining whether a book or writing was to be
> considered Scripture?  

Maybe in some obscure Protestant circle, but those weren't the tests used by
the Catholic Church in 425 to define the canon. . . .

> In case you do not, here they are: First, was the book originated by an
> Apostle.

This is somewhat bogus.  But keep in mind that "The Twelve" and the Apostles
are different sets of people.  Plus, we have books that supposedly were written
by Apostles that were thrown out -- the Gospel of Peter, the Epistle of
Barnabas, and so forth.

> The second test was basically this: did the written works preach sound
> doctrine? What kind of test is this? It's asking if the document teaches what
> is already believed. But what is believed is what came from those documents,
> no?

No.  The early church believed that tradition was authoritative.  One of the
tests they did use was comparing the book to sound doctrine as found in
their tradition.  If the book didn't match with tradition -- out it went.
Of course, they also considered which books were commonly accepted as
inspired, but even up until very near to 425, many churches considered at
least one book as inspired that was later rejected.  Examples include the
Shepherd of Hermas, the Didache, and the Epistle of Barnabas.  But I think
one of the criteria for the canon included age -- most of those books were
too old.

I might also add that some books were rejected by a large number of
Christians until that point, including Revelation, 2 and 3 John, 2 Peter and
a few others.

> The third test is even worse: Was the book mentioned or referred to by the
> early church leaders? This is inline with the circular reasoning that was in
> the second test and is in agreement with clh's post-post:

Why is this circular?  That it was quoted by early church writers is not
"proof" of its authenticity, but it is evidence that it was accepted at the
time.  Such evidence demonstrates that the book is in concert with Apostolic
Tradition, the rule against scripture was compared.

> >whole.  Thus they were recognizing the authority of the Bible, not
> >creating it.  You can find the critical parts of Scripture being
> >quoted as authoritative as far back as we can go in church history.

I disagree with him here.  They were recognizing that the writings were in
accord with sound doctrine. The authority of the Bible comes only from the
church, not from itself, otherwise it would be, as you say, a circular
argument.  Jesus founded a church.  The Spirit preserves that church from
error.  The Apostles and other early Christians wrote writings. The church
declared that these writings were inspired by the church's authority, and
then gave the Scriptures authority in their own right -- but not exclusive
authority -- and submitted itself to them.

> It comes back to the question, "yeah, but what *is* Scripture"?

Scripture is what the Catholic Church declared to be inspired and inerrant
in 425 A.D.

/=============================================================================\
| Eric Ewanco - Software Engineer     For the rash and outrageous opinions ex-|
| Digital Equipment Corp, Maynard MA  pressed herein I alone am responsible;  |
| ewanco@kalvin.enet.dec.com          they do not belong to DIGITAL(TM).      |
\==============================- 2 Th 2:15 -==================================/

[I'm still waiting for a reference to this decision in 425.  That is
the date of the council of Nicea, but I don't think any of their
decisions are quite what you're looking for.

The three criteria he quoted are roughly what scholars have claimed
were used.  However I should warn you that they are probably somewhat
idealized.  That is, there was never a specific group that sat down
with a bunch of candidate books, and evaluated them using specified
criteria.  The winnowing process happened over a period of centuries,
involved many people, and the criteria were somewhat flexible.

There's a lot of mythology in this area, on both sides.  Unfortunately
questions of canonicity have gotten caught up in Catholic/Protestant
debates.  The concept that the Church declared the Bible to be
inerrant by an exercise of its authority, is just as tendentious as
the corresponding Protestant claim that the church got all of its
authority from the Bible.  (The latter may make sense as a description
of how Protestant churches now operate, but as an historical
description of how the early church developed, it is impossible.)

--clh]