The Bible & The Church: Both Or Neither [TRANSCRIPT]

EWTN ^ | January 2, 2002 | Dr.Scott Hahn

[Lady In Blue]

Dr.Scott Hahn,for those not familiar with him,is a former Presbyterian Minister.He's brilliant! About Dr.Scott Hahn

Dr. Scott Hahn

Dr. Hahn received his BA from Grove City College in Pennsylvania with a triple major of Theology, Philosophy and Economics (magna cum laude). He obtained his MDiv (summa cum laude) from Gordon-Conwell Seminary in 1982. In May 1995, he was awarded a PhD in Systematic Theology from Marquette University (Phi Beta Kappa). His dissertation was titled Kinship by Covenant: A Biblical Theological Analysis of Covenant Types & Texts in the Old and New Testaments.

Dr. Hahn is a former ordained Presbyterian minister with ten years of ministry experience in congregations, and a former Professor of Theology at Chesapeake Theological Seminary. Dr. Hahn entered the Catholic Church at Easter 1986 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin while his wife, Kimberly, entered at Easter 1990 in Joliet, Illinois. (He and his wife have jointly authored a book documenting their conversion. It is entitled: Rome Sweet Home:Our Journey to Catholicism).
Since 1990, he has served as Assistant Professor of Theology and Scripture at Franciscan University of Steubenville.

He is founder and director of the Institute of Applied Biblical Studies; and editor of the Bulletin of Applied Biblical Studies since 1983. He has given over 600 talks in the U.S. and other countries on theological and biblical topics related to the Catholic faith.

Dr. Hahn and his wife reside in Steubenville with their five children.

---

If you have any questions, comments, or critique of the content of this page or its links,
please e-mail me :

...JohnD'Arcy darcyj@mindspring.com

To all visitors...Grace of Christ to you!

Scott Hahn- A Short Bio100% Catholic | Dr.Scott Hahn links | Pope John Paul II links

---

Dr.Scott Hahn Bible Studies on audio/video cassettes are made available
by St.Joseph's Communications (http://www.saintjoe.com)
E-Mail tom@saintjoe.com on specific questions on the content of each series.
View St.Joseph's Catalog of many other Dr.Hahn bible studies .
Dr.Hahn bible studies on-line.

[Libertarianize the GOP]

bump

[kezekiel]

The Catholic/Protestant schism is an old one (duh!), and I won't restate the points here, but I will thank you for posting this. While I disagree that you have to have both the Bible and the (Roman Catholic) Church, I did appreciate his style.

[ChinaGotTheGoodsOnClinton]

Bump.

[Cap'n Crunch]

bump for a later read...

I like Scott Hahn, I have alot of his tapes. I'm praying my oldest is going to attend Franciscan U next year.

[Cap'n Crunch]

bump for a later read...

I like Scott Hahn, I have alot of his tapes. I'm praying my oldest is going to attend Franciscan U next year.

[Cap'n Crunch]

bump for a later read...

I like Scott Hahn, I have alot of his tapes. I'm praying my oldest is going to attend Franciscan U next year.

[patent]

Thanks for the bump!

[Theresa]

Thanks for posting this. I hope it underscores that Catholics really are CHRISTIANS. I don't know why, in this and age a few people persist in the belief that Catholics are not Christian. There really is no excuse for it.

[Theresa]

"The only reason Luther got into trouble was because he wouldn't submit his translations (of Scripture) to the Bishops because he knew he had been tinkering with the Greek, adding words that weren't there in the original: Romans chapter 3, verse 28, where he says, "A man is justified by faith alone." And he makes that the battle cry of the Reformation although the word "alone" is not in the Greek, and he knew it. Yet he insisted on a mistranslation to further his own cause."

Hmmmmm.

[Matchett-PI]

HERE

[GreatOne]

Wonderful! I was actually just listening to this tape in my car two weeks ago. He fleshes this speech out more in his book "Rome, Sweet Rome", his conversion story book.

If Catholicism would actually be as Bible-centered as it is supposed to be, I believe that Protestantism would die out (flame away).

[Sweet Hour of Prayer]

The Word governs the Church. The Church does not govern the Word. God established the first church and by the time Jesus walked the earth, He called the Church leaders, "a brood of vipers." Churches/men will error and sin.

I don't follow the author's statement that the New Testament church existed before Christ's resurrection. The old testament covenant (Mosaic law/animal sacrifices) was God's method of redemption until He provided the perfect and final sacrifice in Jesus. When Jesus conquered death, the new covenant was established. Jesus' Apostles (those with firsthand experience with Christ) preached, wrote letters and performed miracles that validated their authenticity. These Acts, were documented over several years and since the majority of the population did not read, the oral tradition was the only way the mass of humanity could learn about God's salvation through Jesus. The compilation of the letters, and Biblical texts in what we call the New Testament, is amazing, in that even with several authors, the content is remarkably the same.

I don't believe an Omniscient, Omnipresent, Omnipotent loving God, would allow the Bible to be an errant representation of Himself.

I rest my faith in Sola Scriptura.

[kezekiel]

Thanks for posting this. I hope it underscores that Catholics really are CHRISTIANS. I don't know why, in this and age a few people persist in the belief that Catholics are not Christian. There really is no excuse for it.

I have met very, very few people who would make such a blanket statement. Even the hardcore "the Catholic Church is apostate" types typically allow concession for the ability of the individual Catholic to have a saving faith. As vitriolic as the rhetoric may be against Rome, few would be so presumptuous as to rule out the possibility that one could be both Catholic and saved.

That characterizes my position. I see the Catholic Church as having accrued some peculiar doctrines and traditions that have little or no scriptural foundation, but the Gospel message is still there. Like any other church, as long as they preach "Christ and him crucified," there is the potential for salvation, if not the purest faith.

[Some hope remaining.]

Hmmmmm.

Yeah, I said, "hmmmm" about that part too. But overall I found it pretty interesting.

[Some hope remaining.]

I don't believe an Omniscient, Omnipresent, Omnipotent loving God, would allow the Bible to be an errant representation of Himself.

I rest my faith in Sola Scriptura.

What would a God who allows all men, even evil ones, the exercise of their free agency allow? Does being omnipotent mean you will always intervene?

Are you saying the Bible was always perfect or just the version (or one of the versions) that we have today?

The claim by the reformers is that The Church had corrupted the Bible and that's why they made their own translations, for which many of them were burned at the stake, etc.

So are you saying that for a period of hundreds of years God allowed the Bible to be imperfect but for you today, because He cares more about you than all those who lived during those centuries, He has removed all imperfection? Or was it always perfect and the reformation unnecessary? Or what is it you're actually saying?

Just wondering.

[Sweet Hour of Prayer]

The claim by the reformers is that The Church had corrupted the Bible

I believe the accusation was that Rome had "interpreted" the Scriptures to mean something they didn't. The translations are very similar, however the interpretation and thus the tenants of the verses were misleading. This type of debate also happened to the Jews trying to interpret and follow Mosaic law. In their attempt to "clarify" the meaning of God's Law the Pharisees "interpreted" the 10 Commandments to include something like 600 additional rules!

When it comes to trusting the authenticity of the Bible you must read it and investigate for yourself. Nobody else, can prove to you one way or the other. God claims to be sovereign, you either believe that, or you don't. Do you trust the Holy Spirit who dwells within Christians to guide you, as Jesus promised He would when He stated that He would not leave us as orphans? Or, do you rely on an elected Pope to tell you what God is saying (a system very much mirroring the Jewish High Priest)? It is easy to reread the outcome of the Council of Trent and have understanding about both Luther's and Rome's positions (with exception to the concept of Indulgences, purgatory and Marian prayer... I have no idea where those came from scripturally?). I guess, debate over the correct interpretation/translation of individual words will continue until Jesus returns, as we are fallible.

[Some hope remaining.]

I believe the accusation was that Rome had "interpreted" the Scriptures to mean something they didn't. The translations are very similar, however the interpretation and thus the tenants of the verses were misleading.

This is not the case, based on what I've read. I don't have an authoritative source handy but a quick search for history of the english Bible on the internet turned up a few interesting links. Here's some excerpts from one:

... Erasmus' Latin was not the Vulgate translation of Jerome, but his own fresh rendering of the Greek New Testament text that he had collated from six or seven partial New Testament manuscripts into a complete Greek New Testament.

The Latin that Erasmus translated from the Greek revealed enormous corruptions in the Vulgate's integrity amongst the rank and file scholars, many of whom were already convinced that the established church was doomed by virtue of its evil hierarchy. Pope Leo X's declaration that "the fable of Christ was very profitable to him" infuriated the people of God.

.
.

By the 1580's, the Roman Catholic Church saw that it had lost the battle ... In 1582, the Church of Rome surrendered their fight for "Latin only" and decided that if the Bible was to be available in English, they would at least have an official Roman Catholic English translation. And so, using the Latin Vulgate as a source text, they went on to publish an English Bible with all the distortions and corruptions that Erasmus had revealed and warned of 75 years earlier. Because it was translated at the Roman Catholic College in the city of Rheims, it was known as the Rheims ( or Rhemes) New Testament.

In 1589, Dr. Fulke of Cambridge published the "Fulke's Refutation", in which he printed in parallel columns the Bishops Version along side the Rheims Version, attempting to show the error and distortion of the Roman Church's corrupt compromise of an English version of the Bible.

The above comes from English Bible History although as a whole it's a bit too biased (against Catholics) of a rendition in my opinion.

If you go Here you can see a timeline of all this stuff. So it looks to me that for a period of hundreds of years God was either not omnipotent enough to preserve his Word perfectly or else it was not His intention to do so. Since I certainly believe He is omnipotent I choose to believe it was not his intention to force it to be preserved. So if He didn't preserve it perfectly for them, then why for us?

Again, please don't misinterpret my intentions. I fully believe in the Bible. I just don't view it as the only source of authority the way fundamentalists do.

When it comes to trusting the authenticity of the Bible you must read it and investigate for yourself. Nobody else, can prove to you one way or the other. I do trust the authenticity of the Bible. I just side more with the Catholics in the sense that it's not the only word of God.

God claims to be sovereign, you either believe that, or you don't. Again, I believe this too. I believe that God could have chosen to preserve the Bible perfectly with all the knowledge that He wanted us to have. But because of free agency I believe He chose not to do that. He preserved it enough such that people who seek Him can find Him. But everything the Apostles taught is not in there. Everything Jesus taught is not in there. Nobody even wrote down most of what they taught. And I think it's pretty bold to claim that everything He wants us to know is all found in the Bible.

[Sweet Hour of Prayer]

You gave me a lot to look at and think about. It'll take me a little while to have a good look.

I base my historical understanding of the Scriptures and evolution of the church on a variety of books by R.C. Sproul and J.I. Packer. I became interested in studying about the history of the Bible and the long-standing evangelical rift with the Catholic church after reading many threads here on Free Republic. I'm very eager to read what you've recommended.