Mary, Jesus and the Holy Spirit

No one is denying the superintendancy of the Holy Spirit and the compilation of the Canon of Scripture. This was decided long before the defection of the Church of Rome when she became "The Holy Roman Empire" (Charlemagne)and went on a 1000 year blood lust.

HankD

[ August 08, 2002, 02:49 PM: Message edited by: HankD ]

 

So then, the "Church of Rome" was guided by the Holy Spirit until 768?

Then the writings of the early Church Fathers may be trusted prior to that? I mean, they would then represent true Christian theology and not the apostate "Church of Rome".

Great!! Shall we begin to compare those writings to what you and yours now believe?

Will your beliefs hold up to the documented history of the first 700 or so years of the Church?

[ August 08, 2002, 03:50 PM: Message edited by: trying2understand ]

 

I wonder if anyone can come up with a Bible from that time, which had precisely the books that any Bible has today.

We're getting slowly to the truth here.

 

Dear T2,

As I responded in another post, Charlemagne was the point of departure for the Church of Rome when she began the blood letting. Constantine (who first received the title Pontifex Maximus) was the first world courtier of the Church of Rome.Constantine assumed power of the Church around 312AD. Even at that, the spirit of antichrist was already in the world attempting to seduce the local churches of Asia minor and Europe.

HankD

 

Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, listed the 27 books that we now have in the New Testament as canonical in 367AD. These 27 books were generally held as canonical by the local churches since about 200AD.

Later councils such as Chalcedon (451AD) put their stamp of approval on this decision.

The 3rd and 4th century Church of Rome hardly resembled the Vatican megalopolis.

 

Let's see...

"For the New Testament, he (Athenasius) lists the 27 books that are recognized today. (If you will look at your list of New Testament books, you may note that Matthew through 2 Thessalonians were never in dispute, that the next four were subject to relatively little dispute, and that the remaining books had more trouble being accepted. There were also a few books that looked as if they might make the list, but eventually did not, the most conspicuous being the Epistle of Barnabas, the Epistle of Clement, and the Shepherd of Hermas.)

For the Old Testament, his list is like that used by most Protestants, except that he omits Esther, and includes Baruch, with the letter of Jeremiah. His supplementary list is Wisdom, Sirach, Tobias, Judith, and Esther. He does not mention Maccabees. "

http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bio/152.html

Notice that he omits some books found in various Bibles today, and inserts others not found in any modern Bible. Back where we started.

 

I really don't see the point of this Galatian.
I could line up a series of historians against whatever list you wish. It would only prove we both have extensive resources.

the fact is that by the 3rd century there was no dispute of the 27 books. Even the Shephard of Hermas was off the list as a book of Scripture.
A devotional yes, Scripture, no.

As some one has already mentioned the Spirit of God bears witness to our spirits to those whom are His. This same Spirit superintended these historical events and knows which are His books as well as who are His children.

Someone else has noticed that several groups of opposing philosophies seem to be claiming this same Spirit.
Well, this was explained in Matthew Chapter 13. The object of the enemy in this chapter right off is The Word of God.
So it is no small leap of the imagination to see where the confusion is coming from.

However The Lord will prevail in the end and take care of it...

49 So shall it be at the end of the world: the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just,
50 And shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.
51 Jesus saith unto them, Have ye understood all these things? They say unto him, Yea, Lord.

I guess I said all that to say this: God can and will use whatever or whoever He wishes to accomplish His will on earth. As many have said He used a donkey to speak His word. If He wishes to use the Church of Rome or any other Church of any age anywhere, then He can and will.

The Word of God says as much, concerning His enemies:

Revelation 17:17 For God hath put in their hearts to fulfil his will, and to agree, and give their kingdom unto the beast, until the words of God shall be fulfilled.

Yes, I may be the one who of those to whom this passage refers, but I don't think so.

HankD

 

Ok. 312AD it is.

How will your beliefs stand against historical writings prior to 312AD?

I'm game. Are you?

[ August 09, 2002, 10:15 AM: Message edited by: trying2understand ]

 

My beliefs are formed from my understanding of the Scriptures as the Final Authority.
The writings of the Early Church Fathers are valuble in that they are reflections of their thinking concerning what the Scripture teach.

Some of their beliefs such as individual beliefs concerning the Real Presence I would not be able to agree with but still see them as orthodox.
Whole systematic theologies such as gnosticism or Modalism I would not agree with and would view them as heretical.
Some, such as Athanasius are champions of the Faith (IMO) in terms of the Trinity and would agree wholeheartedly.

In other words little or nothing would change in my views because of anything the early church fathers have to say.
I do on occassion read them to do research or just browse.
Yes, insight has been imparted by reading the fathers.
Frankly much of it is tedious and boring reading.
Some of it even resembles the dunybrooking that goes on here at the BB

HankD

[ August 09, 2002, 12:50 PM: Message edited by: HankD ]

 

So we now see that the "canonical" Bible actually included books not in our present Bible, and did not have all the books our present Bible has.

But it appears that we've gotten to where it's been admitted that the Bible was compiled according to tradions of the church.

 

I would prefer to say that the Bible was compiled according to the Superintendence of the Holy Spirit.

So, yes, I will cede that God can and does use mortal sinful men (Hmm, are there any other kind?)to accomplish His will on earth. Both to write His Word, Preserve and translate it as has been manifested by the Latin, Greek, Egyptian and English speaking churches as well as many others.

HankD

[ August 09, 2002, 09:42 PM: Message edited by: HankD ]

 

And therefore, the authority of Scripture can be no greater than the inspiration and scholarship of these men who looked to tradition for the correct compilation.

 

No, rather the authority of Scirpture can be no greater than the Holy Spirit who inspired it.

 

You seem to keep missing the boat. I took his post to say "written under the supervision of the Holy Ghost/God". Not under these men's authority but by God's. If you are saying, no greater than the authority of God, then yes. But you seem to keep implying that the Bible was written by fallible man. If God wasn't leading them in this, then yes. Which side are you on, man or God as per the writting of or authority of the Bible? I'm somewhat confused as to where you are wanting to go with this. What does inspirational(by God), have to do with tradition? Sorry to have butted in, so carry on.....

God Bless..............Alex

[ August 10, 2002, 12:23 AM: Message edited by: Alex ]

 

Originally posted by The Galatian:
And therefore, the authority of Scripture can be no greater than the inspiration and scholarship of these men who looked to tradition for the correct compilation.

So did I. But the fact is, the men who compiled the KJV, and the early one he is talking about, both claimed to have relied on the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. But they came up with somewhat different choices in which books were accepted and which were not.

God's opinion didn't change, did it? So why did they come to different conclusions?

Compiled by fallible man. They prayed for guidance, and relied on Christian tradition, and did the best scholarship that they could to learn what had been accepted by the earliest Christians. But they still differed each time they tried to produce a canonical version.

God isn't fickle. So we can only conclude that the process isn't perfect.

I know of no version of the Bible for which the men compiling it didn't start out with a look at which Scriptures were considered inspired in the early church. That's a good source of authority, since these people were much closer in time to Jesus and his Apostles. Scholarship has been very useful in finding various errors over the centuries.

Inspiration is important, but obviously, it isn't perfect, since it's working on fallible men.

 

Your assumption is wrong, the reason people would considered the books considered to be inspired in the early church is because one of the criterion for a book to qualify was that it had to have a significant acception when it was written, it could not be rejected for a few hundred years before being accepted as scripture. It had nothing to do with the authority of men, but rather had to do with the working of the Holy Spirit both past and present.

 

I think I know what you are trying to say, but the books were written over a long period of time. The OT books were quite ancient in Jesus' time, and the NT books were not all in the same place, and were not all immediately available to all Christians.

Hence, there came to be a number of writings which were tradtionally thought to be authoritative. Since the first, there were attempts to decide which were authoritative, but even the preChristian Jews did not always agree on this.

 

From what I have heard about this in my past was that the biggest problem was "repeats" and also some were just plain HISTORY writtings and evidently were not from God. So, with this in mind, yes they had to pick and choose but the picking and choosing was also inspired by God as it is today. Also, they had a method of transcribing that was virtually perfect. On any given original scroll OR later as a bible, they would pick a word near the center of the writting and would COUNT each word AND letter towards the front and to the back. When finished with the transcription, they would count IN towards the middle. IF they didn't end up on the ogiginal word that was picked, they would find out where and what had been missed OR start over again. This method was used throught the early times. Don't ask me where I found this as I have know it for years. Maybe someone can shed more light to this. I know that our Pastor within the last 15 years had also mentioned this procedure.

I will say IF God want's His Word to continue, it will be accurate enough for us use until He returns. I said IF for those who do not believe as I do.

God Bless..............Alex

 

You've described how people caught transcription errors. But that doesn't help when you are trying to determine which books to include. Remember there was no bound Bible in those days.

I think you've got it right, though. It's accurate enough for God's purposes.

 

Well, thank you!! Since there are no more replies, I guess we all sort of agree now.

God Bless.............Alex