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To: BipolarBob
What you said was that Jesus left us the Bible. The plain meaning of this would be that when he Ascended he left behind a completed Bible. If you meant that after he ascended that he used the instrumentality of the Apostles to give us the Bible, fine. But then you would have to accept the action of the church to authenticate what is and is not a part of the Bible. The apostolic authorship of some of the books of the New Testament was disputed in the early church. Hebrews does not even indicate that it was written by an apostle. There were other books that did claim the authorship of an apostle that were not included in the Bible. Even Luther disputed the inclusion of some of the New Testament books.

The Bible and the visible Church go together. Nor does God inspiring the writing of the Bible contradict him also establishing a visible church. Indeed you cannot have one without the other.

You are right that Jesus did not leave behind a denomination. The division of Christianity between denominations would be the work of the Reformers. What our Lord did establish was one visible church lead by the apostles and their successors.

85 posted on 04/06/2015 12:07:51 PM PDT by Petrosius
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To: Petrosius
If you meant that after he ascended that he used the instrumentality of the Apostles to give us the Bible, fine. But then you would have to accept the action of the church to authenticate what is and is not a part of the Bible. The apostolic authorship of some of the books of the New Testament was disputed in the early church.

And that was done...Hundreds of years before the Roman Constantine religion showed up...

149 posted on 04/07/2015 8:22:00 AM PDT by Iscool
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