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To: Petrosius; Luircin; ealgeone
You keep ignoring my point. It was not that Florence dogmatically defined the canon, but rather that there was a general consensus since the 4th century, and that such would be a part of the Ordinary Magisterium. This, by its very nature, does not issue dogmatic declaration.

"General consensus" still ignores the substantial and unreproved disagreements, and which is contrary to your revisionism that "There was no dogmatic decree on the canon of the Bible until Trent because there was no need for one; the Deuterocanonical books were accepted by Catholics as part of the Bible."

How can you parrot this after all I have provided? As shown, even the Catholic Encyclopedia also states as regards the Middle Ages,

In the Latin Church, all through the Middle Ages [5th century to the 15th century] we find evidence of hesitation about the character of the deuterocanonicals. There is a current friendly to them, another one distinctly unfavourable to their authority and sacredness, while wavering between the two are a number of writers whose veneration for these books is tempered by some perplexity as to their exact standing, and among those we note St. Thomas Aquinas. Few are found to unequivocally acknowledge their canonicity. The prevailing attitude of Western medieval authors is substantially that of the Greek Fathers. The chief cause of this phenomenon in the West is to be sought in the influence, direct and indirect, of St. Jerome's depreciating Prologus (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03267a.htm)

Thus while overall the larger canon may have been accepted, it was far from uniform acceptance, but the reason there was no dogmatic decree on the canon of the Bible until Trent is because it was manifestly allowed for scholars to have varied opinions on the canonicity of certain books, as not being a threat, until this became part of the Reformers beliefs. Even then, I have not seen Luther's view on the canon being cited as a cause for the excommunication of him, or made a real issue until later.

In addition, if you want to impose later expressive teachings on the distinctions btwn different magisterial levels and required assent to them, then you must charge the likes of Athanasius of Alexandria (bishop of Alexandria; Cath. church "father;" c. 367), Cyril of Jerusalem (bishop of Jerusalem; doctor of the Cath church; d. circa. 385 AD), Council of Laodicea (363), bishop Epiphanius of Salamis (c. 310–320 – 403), Gregory of Nazianzus (330 – 390; bishop of Nazianzus), Hilary of Poitiers, (c. 310 – c. 367; bishop of Poitiers and a doctor of the Cath church), John of Damascus (patriarch of Constantinople, 9th century), Melito of Sardis (bishop of Sardis, 4th c.) and Origen (Cath. church "father" and thelogian; c. 184 – c. 253), Rufinus (344/345–411; historian, and theologian), Cardinals Seripando, Caietan, Ximenes, (16th c.) etc. with being in dissent, not rendering the required religious assent of intellect and will.

Yet who instead were not charged with such, since the matter of the canon was not yet officially settled so as to exclude this, as Trent did. And even within Trent, the issue of dogmatically settling the canon saw a vote of 24 yea, 15 nay, with 16 abstaining (44%, 27%, 29%) as to whether to affirm it as an article of faith with its anathemas on those who dissent from it.

But again, I point out the fact that scholarly disagreements over the canonicity (proper) of certain books continued down through the centuries and right into Trent in reaction to Catholic assertions of a settled canon which Luther heretically dissented from as some sort of maverick without scholarly reasons and support.

Moreover, if conformity to the canon of Rome is essential, then why not attack the EOs which add even more books than Rome did to the Palestinian canon?

However, as said, since Catholicism is manifestly wrong in its judgments about what the NT church believed, (based upon the only wholly inspired-of-God and substantive record of what the New Testament church believed) then why should its judgments on the canon of Scripture (which writings are of God) necessarily be believed?

They no more warrant required belief than all the judgments of who was of God by those who sat in the seat of Moses did., despite their own pedigree and being the magisterial stewards of express Divine revelation.

74 posted on 10/08/2019 4:23:54 AM PDT by daniel1212 ( Trust the risen Lord Jesus to save you as a damned and destitute sinner + be baptized + follow Him)
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To: daniel1212
It is interesting where you end your quotation from the Catholic Encyclopedia. The author continues:
The compilatory "Glossa Ordinaria" was widely read and highly esteemed as a treasury of sacred learning during the Middle Ages; it embodied the prefaces in which the Doctor of Bethlehem had written in terms derogatory to the deuteros, and thus perpetuated and diffused his unfriendly opinion. And yet these doubts must be regarded as more or less academic. The countless manuscript copies of the Vulgate produced by these ages, with a slight, probably accidental, exception, uniformly embrace the complete Old Testament. Ecclesiastical usage and Roman tradition held firmly to the canonical equality of all parts of the Old Testament. There is no lack of evidence that during this long period the deuteros were read in the churches of Western Christendom. As to Roman authority, the catalogue of Innocent I appears in the collection of ecclesiastical canons sent by Pope Adrian I to Charlemagne, and adopted in 802 as the law of the Church in the Frankish Empire; Nicholas I, writing in 865 to the bishops of France, appeals to the same decree of Innocent as the ground on which all the sacred books are to be received.
For an understanding of the Ordinary Magisterium you need to look beyond the disputes of academics and look at the day-to-day teachings and practices of the Church. These show that the Deuterocanonical books were received by the Church on an equal basis as the Protocanonical.

Even if we were to accept your premise, all you could show is that there was no consensus on the status the the Deuterocanonical books. So while you might object to the charge that Luther removed these books from the Bible, you would also have to admit that Trent did not add them. All that could be said that they were disputed and that the Protestants fell on one side of this dispute, and that Catholics fell on the other. But here Protestants still have a dilemma. While Catholics can appeal to the authority of the Church to settle this dispute, Protestants can appeal to no authority to support their position. Even an appeal to the consensus of the faithful does not work since, compared to Catholics and the Orthodox, Protestants are in the minority among the Christian faithful.

102 posted on 10/08/2019 5:14:40 PM PDT by Petrosius
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