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To: Fedora
Rome assembled the Bible that Protestants use. Even translated it for them. Attacking Rome is cutting off the limb you're standing on.

You mean being the magisterial discerners and stewards and translators of Divine revelation means such are the assuredly correct interpreters and teachers of it? Yes or no?

353 posted on 05/01/2017 8:26:39 PM PDT by daniel1212 ( Turn to the Lord Jesus as a damned and destitute sinner+ trust Him to save you, then follow Him!)
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To: daniel1212
[My original:]Rome assembled the Bible that Protestants use. Even translated it for them. Attacking Rome is cutting off the limb you're standing on.

[Your response:]You mean being the magisterial discerners and stewards and translators of Divine revelation means such are the assuredly correct interpreters and teachers of it? Yes or no?

I mean several things:

1. As a historical fact, the Catholic Church decided which books belonged in the Biblical canon, and the Protestant canon is borrowed from the Catholic canon, with a portion of books omitted. Without the authority of the early Catholic councils and the historical testimony of the Church Fathers, Protestants have no authoritative basis for settling which books belong in Scripture. For instance, how can Protestants definitively exclude the Shepherd of Hermas, which many 2nd- and 3rd-century Christians considered canonical? I can see how you could make a case against it, but it would be a case based on merely human opinion, with no divine authority behind it.

2. Also as a historical fact, the Catholic Church translated the Bible into first Latin and then English, and the Protestant translation traditions stemming from Luther's translation and from the KJV are based on these earlier Catholic translations.

3. Jesus commissioned the Apostles to preach the Gospel in His name and gave them binding and loosing authority, and they passed this authority on to the bishops through the laying of hands, as Paul records, as Clement of Rome documents in the first century (while the Apostle John was still alive, so you cannot exclude Clement even by your 100-AD-or-less criterion), and as Irenaeus, student of John's disciple Polycarp (who most likely collected the NT books for the first time in the mid-2nd century), confirmed in the 2nd century. So Catholics at least claim a divine commission for our authority, even if you don't accept this authority. In contrast, Protestants can only claim to have an authority based on the authority of a Luther or a Calvin or the founder of whichever new denomination or "nondemoninational denomination" one professes to follow--unless one wants to claim some special new divine commission such as George Fox's inner voice, but that would be going beyond Sola Scriptura. So I don't see where Protestants following Sola Scriptura can claim any authority other than merely human authority when you reject the authority of the Catholic councils that settled the canon. But Paul said his Gospel was not based on mere human wisdom (1 Corinthians 1:18ff).

453 posted on 05/03/2017 11:19:18 PM PDT by Fedora
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