When you say one can reconstruct the whole NT from different copies made by different authors and at different times and places, it says a lot aboyut the Binble, doesn't it, internal inconsistencies and errors notwithstanding?
Posted on 08/07/2009 9:00:03 AM PDT by Teófilo
Folks, Elizabeth Mahlou, my fellow blogger from Blest Atheist, asked me one of those “big questions” which necessitate its own blog post. Here is the question:
I am a Catholic who upon occasion attends Orthodox services because of my frequent travels in Eastern European countries. The differences in the masses are obvious, but I wonder what the differences in the theology are. I don't see much. Is that something that you can elucidate?
I welcome this question because, as many of you know, I belonged to the Eastern Orthodox Church for about four years and in many ways, I still am “Orthodox” (please, don’t ask me elucidate the seeming contradiction at this time, thank you). This question allows me to wear my “Orthodox hat” which still fits me, I think. If you are an Orthodox Christian and find error or lack of clarity in what I am about to say, feel free to add your own correction in the Comments Section.
Orthodox Christians consider the differences between the Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Churches as both substantial and substantive, and resent when Catholics trivialize them. Though they recognize that both communions share a common “Tradition” or Deposit of Faith, they will point out that the Roman Catholic Church has been more inconsistently faithful – or more consistently unfaithful – to Tradition than the Orthodox Church has been in 2000 years of Christian history. Generally, all Orthodox Christians would agree, with various nuances, with the following 12 differences between their Church and the Catholic Church. I want to limit them to 12 because of its symbolic character and also because it is convenient and brief:
1. The Orthodox Church of the East is the Church that Christ founded in 33 AD. She is the One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church confessed in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed. All other churches are separated from by schism, heresy, or both, including the Roman Catholic Church.I think this will do it for now. I invite my Orthodox Christian brethren to agree, disagree, or add your own. Without a doubt, - I am speaking as a Catholic again - what we have in common with the Orthodox Church is immense, but what keeps us apart is important, challenging, and not to be underestimated.
2. Jesus Christ, as Son of God is divine by nature, as born of the Virgin Mary, True Man by nature, alone is the head of the Church. No hierarch, no bishop, no matter how exalted, is the earthly head of the Church, since Jesus Christ’s headship is enough.
3. All bishops are equal in their power and jurisdiction. Precedence between bishops is a matter of canonical and therefore of human, not divine law. “Primacies” of honor or even jurisdiction of one bishop over many is a matter of ecclesiastical law, and dependent bishops need to give their consent to such subordination in synod assembled.
4. The Church is a communion of churches conciliar in nature; it is not a “perfect society” arranged as a pyramid with a single monarchical hierarch on top. As such, the Orthodox Church gives priority to the first Seven Ecumenical Councils as having precedent in defining the nature of Christian belief, the nature and structure of the Church, and the relationship between the Church and secular government, as well as the continuation of synodal government throughout their churches to this day.
5. Outside of the Seven Ecumenical Councils, the Orthodox Church receives with veneration various other regional synods and councils as authoritative, but these are all of various national churches, and always secondary in authority to the first seven. They do not hold the other 14 Western Councils as having ecumenical authority.
6. Orthodox Christians do not define “authority” in quite the same way the Catholic Church would define it in terms of powers, jurisdictions, prerogatives and their interrelationships. Orthodox Christian would say that “authority” is inimical to Love and in this sense, only agape is the one firm criterion to delimit rights and responsibilities within the Church. Under this scheme, not even God himself is to be considered an “authority” even though, if there was a need of one, it would be that of God in Christ.
7. The Orthodox Church holds an anthropology different from that of the Catholic Church. This is because the Orthodox Church does not hold a forensic view of Original Sin, that is, they hold that the sin of Adam did not transmit an intrinsic, “guilt” to his descendants. “Ancestral Sin,” as they would call it, transmitted what may be termed as a “genetic predisposition” to sin, but not a juridical declaration from God that such-a-one is “born in sin.” Hyper-Augustinianism, Catholic, Lutheran, and Reformed, is impossible in Orthodox anthropology because according to the Orthodox, man is still essentially good, despite his propensity to sin. By the way, even what Catholics would consider a “healthy Augustinianism” would be looked at with suspicion by most Orthodox authorities. Many trace “the fall” of the Latin Church to the adoption of St. Augustine as the West’s foremost theological authority for 1,000 years prior to St. Thomas Aquinas. The best evaluations of St. Augustine in the Orthodox Church see him as holy, well-meaning, but “heterodox” in many important details, starting with his anthropology.
8. Since no “forensic guilt” is transmitted genetically through “Original Sin,” the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of our Blessed Mother is considered superfluous. She had no need for such an exception because there was nothing to exempt her from in the first place. Of course, Mary is Theotokos (“God-bearer”), Panagia (“All-Holy”) and proclaimed in every Liturgy as “more honorable than the Cherubim, and beyond compare more glorious than the Seraphim,” but her sanctification is spoken about more in terms of a special, unique, total, and gratuitous bestowing and subsequent indwelling of the Spirit in her, without the need of “applying the merits of the atonement” of Christ to her at the moment of conception, in order to remove a non-existent forensic guilt from her soul, as the Catholic dogma of the Immaculate Conception would have it. If pressed, Orthodox authorities would point at the Annunciation as the “moment” in which this utter experience of redemption and sanctification took place in the life of the Blessed Theotokos. Although the Orthodox believe in her Assumption, they deny that any individual hierarch has any power to singly and unilaterally define it as a dogma binding on the whole Church, and that only Councils would have such power if and when they were to proclaim it and its proclamations received as such by the entire Church.
9. Although Orthodox Christians have at their disposal various institutions of learning such as schools, universities, and seminaries, and do hold “Sunday Schools,” at least in the USA, it is fair to say that the main catechetical vehicle for all Orthodox peoples is the Divine Liturgy. All the liturgical prayers are self-contained: they enshrine the history, the story, the meaning, and the practical application of what is celebrated every Sunday, major feast, and commemoration of angels, saints, and prophets. If one pays attention – and “Be attentive” is a common invitation made throughout the Divine Liturgy – the worshipper catches all that he or she needs to know and live the Orthodox faith without need for further specialized education. For this very reason, the Divine Liturgy, more than any other focus of “power and authority,” is the true locus of Orthodox unity and the principal explanation for Orthodox unity and resiliency throughout history.
10. Since the celebration of the Divine Liturgy is overwhelmingly important and indispensable as the vehicle for True Christian Worship – one of the possible translations of “orthodoxy” is “True Worship – and as a teaching vehicle – since another possible translation of “orthodoxy” is “True Teaching” – all the ecclesiastical arts are aimed at sustaining the worthy celebration of the Divine Liturgy. Iconography in the Eastern Church is a mode of worship and a window into heaven; the canons governing this art are strict and quite unchanging and the use of two-dimensional iconography in temples and chapels is mandatory and often profuse. For them, church architecture exists to serve the Liturgy: you will not find in the East “modernistic” temples resembling auditoriums. Same thing applies to music which is either plain chant, or is organically derived from the tones found in plain chant. This allows for “national expressions” of church music that nevertheless do not stray too far away from the set conventions. Organ music exists but is rare; forget guitars or any other instrument for that matter. Choral arrangements are common in Russia – except in the Old Calendarist churches – the Orthodox counterparts to Catholic “traditionalists.”
11. There are Seven Sacraments in the Orthodox Church, but that’s more a matter of informal consensus based on the perfection of the number “seven” than on a formal dogmatic declaration. Various Orthodox authorities would also argue that the tonsure of a monk or the consecration of an Emperor or other Orthodox secular monarch is also a sacramental act. Opinion in this instance is divided and the issue for them still open and susceptible to a final dogmatic definition in the future, if one is ever needed.
12. The end of man in this life and the next is similar between the Orthodox and the Catholics but I believe the Orthodox “sing it in a higher key.” While Catholics would say that the “end of man is to serve God in this life to be reasonably happy in this life and completely happy in the next,” a rather succinct explanation of what being “holy” entails, the Orthodox Church would say that the end of man is “deification.” They will say that God became man so that man may become “god” in the order of grace, not of nature of course. Men – in the Greek the word for “man” still includes “womankind” – are called to partake fully of the divine nature. There is no “taxonomy” of grace in the Orthodox Church, no “quantification” between “Sanctifying Grace” and actual grace, enabling grace, etc. Every grace is “Sanctifying Grace,” who – in this Catholic and Orthodox agree – is a Person, rather than a created power or effect geared to our sanctification. Grace is a continuum, rather than a set of discreet episodes interspersed through a Christian’s life; for an Orthodox Christian, every Grace is Uncreated. The consequences of such a view are rich, unfathomable, and rarely studied by Catholic Christians.
Thank you Elizabeth for motivating me to write these, and may the Lord continue to bless you richly.
Mr. Rogers...
What you said.
Best,
ampu
“Paul isn’t Jesus, and those who say his words are those of Jesus I ask how do they know that.”
” I want you to know, brothers, that the gospel I preached is not something that man made up. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.” Galatians 1
AMPU: ”I want you to know, brothers, that the gospel I preached is not something that man made up. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.” Galatians 1
So, because Paul says so that makes is true?!? How do you KNOW what he says is true? Just because YOU believe it?
“So, because Paul says so that makes is true?!? How do you KNOW what he says is true? Just because YOU believe it?”
No offense meant, but don’t you belong to a Church
that was involved in formalizing the Canon of Scripture
at the Council at Carthage in 387 A.D.?
They acknowledged that Paul’s writings were the
inspired Word of God. I accept that. You don’t???
Is it that you personally do not acknowledge what
the Church formalized? Truthfully, assuming you are
a Christian (and I am), I don’t get how you could
write that???
If you have a moment, would you clarify whether
you are a Christian and what you have against
the Church choosing Paul’s writings as inspired
Word of God?
Thank you,
ampu
So, the only one who interpreted the Hebrew Scriptures correctly was Paul? Either Jews are incredibly stupid and never got their own Scirptures right, or they didn't think Paul was that smart. I would wager for the latter.
My point... and I get it from Paul...and from the author of Genesis 15...and from Habakkuk....and from pretty much the rest of the Hebrew scriptures... is that the Hebrew scriptures teach that when one believes God, it is reckoned to him as righteousness
God's commandments tell Israel what to do and what not to do in order to live a righteous life. The mindest is simp[ly that if you honestly try and honestly fail, God will consider it righteousness. No one expects perfection from imperfect beings. So, being unable to keep the law perfectly is immaterial. Your intention counts in righteousness.
Hebrew God demanded obedience, not faith. Christ rewards those who did "it to Me" in Matthew 28. Paul re-invented the wheel and sold it to the pagans, and saved the Church. That's all.
In those areas where the Hebrew and Christian readings clash, the KJV goes with the Septuagint (Christian-friendly) version. So, at best it is a carefully choreographed amalgam of the (predominantly) Hebrew and Greek Old Testament versions.
Oh yeah, the Protestant "Septuagint is a Christian creation" argument form the 19th century nut. dead sea Scrolls show that it is not.
But if you are going to use historical evidence as evidence, I would be careful because then you are placing the entire NYT on the chopping block.
The earliest copies of the complete Bibles (that are in no way in full agreement with the current ones) date back only to the 4th century. The rest of the NT dating to the 2nd century and later are usually pieces of papyrus with half a dozen verse at most, and yet we accept the 4th century Bibles as something handed down by God, index, hard cover, red letters, and all. By your standard, the Bible should be highly suspect. I agree.
That means the NT references to the Septuagint passages are either corrupt Hebrew verses, changed to fit the new Christian theology, or there really was a Greek source which the authors (Pharisee Paul included) of the NT used as reference, in preference to the Hebrew Scripture!
Nevertheless, as things stand right now, the NT references to the OT agree with the Septuagint version, whether real or invented, in over 90% of the cases. So, if it was good enough for the Gospel writers and Paul, it must be good enough for the Church, right?
Pretty much.. and I'm saying the Christians have gotten much of it wrong as well. :) ... especially their ecclesiology and Israelology.
But Paul got it right? By whose standards?
In that vein, the Hebrew scriptures also say over and over again that the Israelites got it wrong
Funny, isn't it, that God has to wait for us to get it right, instead of just making it right. If you create imperfect beings, how can you expect perfection? The Hebrew God never expected perfection, he expected obedience with the right intent. Or maybe God is just amused with us trying to be more than we can be.
The Jewish conveyors of the text didn't gloss over their own heroes' sins and errors. They displayed their failures, warts and all. There is no deification of Abraham, Moses, David, Hezekiah, etc. They are shown for what they are, flawed men who, nevertheless, knew their God
They knew their God? How do you know that? Because flawed, ordinary men who got it all wrong said so? How do you know what God is? How can you recognize God if you don't know what God is? How can you tell the voices you hear are presumably those of God and not the insanity in you?
Concerning the New Testament:
“Although one may hear of thousands of variants or errors, we must keep in mind that they count the same error in each of the 5,000 manuscripts. After careful examination, they have found that only 40 lines (400 words) of the 20,000 lines are in question.”
“Earlier still, fragments and papyrus copies of portions of the New Testament date from 100 to 200 years (180-225 A.D.) before Vaticanus and Sinaticus. The outstanding ones are the Chester Beatty Papyrus (P45, P46, P47) and the Bodmer Papyrus II, XIV, XV (P46, P75).
From these five manuscripts alone, we can construct all of Luke, John, Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, Hebrews, and portions of Matthew, Mark, Acts, and Revelation. Only the Pastoral Epistles (Titus, 1 and 2 Timothy) and the General Epistles (James, 1 and 2 Peter, and 1, 2, and 3 John) and Philemon are excluded.”
Reference the Old Testament:
“Most of the biblical manuscripts found at Qumran belong to the MT tradition or family. This is especially true of the Pentateuch and some of the Prophets. The well-preserved Isaiah scroll from Cave 1 illustrates the tender care with which these sacred texts were copied. Since about 1700 years separated Isaiah in the MT from its original source, textual critics assumed that centuries of copying and recopying this book must have introduced scribal errors into the document that obscured the original message of the author.
The Isaiah scrolls found at Qumran closed that gap to within 500 years of the original manuscript. Interestingly, when scholars compared the MT of Isaiah to the Isaiah scroll of Qumran, the correspondence was astounding. The texts from Qumran proved to be word-for-word identical to our standard Hebrew Bible in more than 95 percent of the text. The 5 percent of variation consisted primarily of obvious slips of the pen and spelling alterations (Archer, 1974, p. 25). Further, there were no major doctrinal differences between the accepted and Qumran texts...”
Then why is the OT not sitting on the altar together with the Gospels? Rather it is read only in the post Vatican II Church. For at least 1,700 years, the Catholic Church read Epistles 9by lay people) and Gospels (by priests and deacons) in that order during Mass, only to introduce the OT in 1964 (for politically correct reasons)!
Perhaps the Church doesn't consider the OT not in spiritual error, but not on the par with the Gospels either (and yet both are supposed to be the words of the very same God).
The Church is not a continuation of Judaism but something that did NOT exist until 33 AD (remember, Christ established the Church?), based on what is believed to have been taught by Jesus and recorded in the Gospels.
The OT is to be read allegorically, as Phylo (a hellenized Jews) taught (I believe Eusebius even refers to him as "St." Phylo because of the influence he had on the way Christians interpreted the OT), through the prism of the Gospels, in other words looking for Jesus archetypes and prefiguring of his birth.
That's not how the Jews read it. There is no doubt that the Church thinks that the Jews got it all wrong or else we would all be Jews! How can they be right as far as Christians are concerned if they rejected, and still reject Christ form the get go?
And why did the NT writers use Septuagint and not the Hebrew Scriptures in over 90% of the cases when making references to the OT if the Hebrew Scriptures are never wrong?
I have been through this many times and I have pulled every piece of information I could on this topic. The oldest "fragment" if you care to call it that is this piece of John's Gospel (believed to be early 2nd century, almost one hundred years after Christ).
The outstanding ones are the Chester Beatty Papyrus (P45, P46, P47) and the Bodmer Papyrus II, XIV, XV (P46, P75)...From these five manuscripts alone, we can construct all of Luke, John, Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, Hebrews, and portions of Matthew, Mark, Acts, and Revelation. Only the Pastoral Epistles (Titus, 1 and 2 Timothy) and the General Epistles (James, 1 and 2 Peter, and 1, 2, and 3 John) and Philemon are excluded.”
Here is a simple "worth a thousand words" answer to your statement:
We now have early and very early evidence for the text of the New Testament. A classified list of the most important manuscripts will make this clear. Numbers preceded by a P refer to papyri, the letters refer to parchment manuscripts.
ca. A.D. 200 250 300 350 450 Matthew P45 B Sin. Mark P45 B Sin. A Luke P4,P45,P75 B Sin. A John P66 P45,P75 B Sin. A Acts P45 B Sin. A Romans-Hebrews P46 B Sin. A James-Jude P72,B Sin. A Apocalypse P47 Sin. A
Notice nothing prior to the 3rd century. All your reconstructions of the Bible are based primarily on the copies of copies of copies made 200 to 250 years after Christ.
Of the oldest 4th century (c AD 350) complete Bibles, the Codices Sinaiticus and Vaticanus contain numerous internal disagreements, inconsistencies, and so on. I have bad news for you: there is no reliable copy of the NT anywhere to be found because there is no way to ascertain, even with textual criticism what the originals looked like, what was in them, who wrote them or when.
From indirect evidence it is very obvious that the copies were "redacted" to reflect developing religion and that mysteriously some that deviated form the "orthodox" norms disappeared after the first Ecumenical Council established Church dogma (i.e. Matthew 28:19 without the Trinitarian formula).
perhaps the Church doesn’t consider...should read perhaps the Church does consider...
almost one hundred years should read almost two hundred years
When you say one can reconstruct the whole NT from different copies made by different authors and at different times and places, it says a lot aboyut the Binble, doesn't it, internal inconsistencies and errors notwithstanding?
There is something inherently misleading in trying to fool people with out-of-cotext obfuscations like "we can reconstruct complete copies..." claims by so many Bible scholars. Don't buy into that.
Okay, but show me what the original TLM was like. The TKLM has been in use in Rome since the end of the 6th century AD. God only knows how much it was changed between that time and the Council of Trent, which specifically forbade any changes to the liturgy. This lasted one or two popes, and then changes began to occur.
As far as the Eastern liturgy is concerned, the OT readings have been moved to vespers and the Great Lent. The variant (Catechumen) part of the Divine Liturgy has two Psalms buried in the Slavonic version. The Greek version may have some too. The Epistle (Apostolos) is on the cantor's stand, read by a lay person. Only the four Gospels are on the altar. The rest of the New Nestament (the so-called deuterocanonicals) and The Old testament are nowhere to be seen.
You did not clarify some of these point. Where is the Old Testament in the Catholic churches located during the liturgy? Why is it not together with the Gospels if both are presumably the words of the same God?
Why are people sitting when the Epistles are read if presumably Paul's words are really Christ's own words? Why is the entire Bible not carried around but only the Gospels?
tklm=tlm
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