Christianity and how the bible was put together

God settled it through the church universal at that time, leading godly church leaders to settle the matter.

 

What were the names of these leaders? Where did they meet? When? I thought Baptists didn't believe in a universal church - surely in Baptist ecclesiology, each local congregation should have been free to work out which Canon they would use?

By whom?

No contradiction - God determined it through His Church, as you yourself agree in your last post just above.

Apples and oranges - the LXX was the Scriptures for the Greek-speaking Jews

 

Again just about any good theology will have some of this information, and you can find many more detailed books on it.

You should study Baptist ecclesiology more, it sounds like.

By the church.

Yes, that's my point.

Not in question. But the question you are asking is about additions to the Scriptures. And I pointing out that additions are not considered the Scriptures, whether they be the DC or study notes or anything else.

 

OK, you're avoiding the issue - to clarify, please define what you mean by 'the church' and 'church leaders' and where and when you say they decided this issue. I know what my answers are as an Anglican but I'm interested as to what yours are. Please give them.

 

The church is the total number of Spirit-baptized believers from Pentecost to the Raptures, and the leaders are the men in church history who served as pastors/elders/bishops (they are all the same) who led the church and taught them.

As I said, Matt, this information is available many resources. I don't have the time to do the work for you. If you are interested, read up on it.

 

I already have and, based on that I would say the following:-

1. The Church was the Catholic-Orthodox Church.

2. Its leaders who determined the Canon under the guidance of God the Holy Spirit were the Bishops, specifically St Athanasius, sometime Bishop of Alexandria (his Festal Letter of Easter 367), and the Bishops present at the Councils of Hippo and Carthage.

If you disagree with the above, please state the names of the church leaders whom you say determined the Canon

 

Yes, Athanasius' list is the earliest one which is still extant. I'd have to go home and look again and Historia Ecclesiastica to remind myself what Eusebius says about the other ones.

 

But I showed Paul quoting philosophers and poets. Does that make them Scripture? You totally ignored that point, and given your position, for understandable reasons. It refutes it by showing that citation of something doesn't mean that it is Scripture. Have you considered what else the ECF quote to "make a point"? Are you also arguing that it should be considered Scripture? I doubt it. Which leads me to wonder, why are you using a double standard?

Same thing he meant last time you asked: The recognized OT canon which was established as the 39 books (which were actually 22 books the way they were divided), and the part of the NT that was already written, and by extension "all" of Scripture including the parts that were not yet written.

So again, there remains some significant argumentative errors and assumptions in your position.

 

But Paul is making a theological point both there and in Titus. He is using it to support his point.

The NT use of other than 39 sources is irrelevant. I have never seen anyone try to make that argument, and I think with good reason. We recognize that citing a source for support says nothing about the source itself. When the NT says "All Scripture" than we assume that "all Scripture" is in view. We don't assume that things other than Scripture are in view.

 

I don't know what you are talking about here. I don't know what "that" is, and I don't know on what basis you are arguing that it is circular.

First, I am not talking about "churches" but the church singular. Second, not everything with "church" on the door is a NT church. I don't know of any NT churches that accept more than the 39 books of the OT and the 27 books of the NT.

That's bad reasoning, as I have already shown. There is no evidence that the believers at that time (or any time) accepted the DC as canonical. The citation of it only proves thati t was cited as useful for the authors point. As I have shown, the NT also cites other sources, none of which you are arguing for. That is a double standard. If NT use shows that something is canonical, then you have to argue that for everything the NT cites. If the NT use does not argue that something is canonical, then your argument goes out the window.

 

But the poitn is that that is an illegitimate argument because there is no evidence that teh DC was accepted as Scripture. My argument is not circular. My point is that when he says Scripture, only those things accepted as Scripture count. The DC was not accepted as Scripture by the church.

 

You haven't answered his question which he has repeated above in his last post. Please do so

Then the Church singular used the LXX as the basis for their OT, in the original Greek in the East and in Jerome's Latin Vulgate in the West

The churches in the NT didn't even have the NT!

Then you need to demonstrate what the NT writers understood by the term "All Scripture", hence TS's comment about your argument being circular; it is.

 

The evidence of the NT is the citation of the Law and the Prophets several times, which is known as the 39 (22) books. Nothing else is cited as Scripture, and the Law and the Prophets never refer to anything more than the 39 books.

Furthermore, there were NT books that were accepted as Scripture as Peter reminds us in 2 Peter 3.

 

First, you are changing the discussion by saying "churches in the NT" when I referred to NT churches, that is churches that are characterized by their following of the NT. Second, even churches in the NT had some of the NT, and had all of it by the end of hte century. The books themselves were written to the churches in the first century, so to say that they didn't have it is simply incorrect, though it may have been the product of writing too quickly without thinking about what you were saying. But even 2 Peter 3 refers to the writings of Paul as Scripture, so his writings were well known.

As I pointed out, TS's comment was misguided. I have pointed out what the NT writer meant by "all Scripture," and you have yet to refute it. There is no evidence that the NT writer included the DC in the "All Scripture." It just isn't there. I think this is a case where you have simply decided to accept tradition rather than go back and take a rigorous view of the doctrine involved.