Canons go Boom

Courtesy cbcs

I recently had a friend challenge me on the canonicity of the so called "apocrypha" - what Catholics call the deuterocanonical books. These are the seven books of the Bible which Protestants reject as being part of Scripture, but Catholics accept. The challenge gave me the opportunity to examine the matter in way more detail than I had before. It was a real eye-opener, and I thought I would share what I learned.

I was hit with 31 reasons why the apocrypha are not Scripture, and found problems with all 31 reasons. I will not go into each on in detail (you're welcome) but there are some general principles. First off, the whole issue of canonicity brings up the whole question of authority (since all differences between Catholics and Protestants is ultimately a matter of authority). Science fiction author John C Wright has written a few articles on this that are far better than anything I could write. A couple of quotes (with links to the articles):

"...one cannot argue that the books of the Bible are canonical and argue at the same time that neither the Church nor any one has the authority to canonize them." - John C Wright

"The redacted sections of the written message provide a logically insurmountable paradox for the Protestant messengers. If their sole authority for the authenticity of their message is the written part of the message, then they have no authority to redact or remove parts of the message on any grounds. The cannot throw away the Book of the Maccabeus or Tobit or the Letters of James or anything else because they claim that neither they nor anyone has the authority to define the cannon." - John C Wright

Now, onto the 31 reasons... I was able to fold all 31 down to five different reasons. You get 31 reasons by repeating the same thing from a slightly different angle or by claiming each church father as a separate authority. Here are my five reasons. If you can think of something that is claimed by Protestants that is not in these five categories, please let me know - I'd by happy to add a sixth.

1. The Catholic Church rejected the books, then changed the canon in the 1500s. This is simply not true, as you can find the documents of the earlier councils in the 300s which list the same canon (for instance http://taylormarshall.com/2008/08/decree-of-council-of-rome-ad-382-on.html).

2. The Jews rejected the books - although they did not until at least 100 AD, which means they were accepted during Jesus' life time (yes, there were certain sects that rejected various sets of books, but of course that is true all throughout history). Additionally the Jews rejected the books of the New Testament, so if we are to accept the Jews as authorities for the canon we have to discard the entire New Testament. I've heard the counter argument that the Jews have authority over the books that don't include Jesus, but claim is ridiculous on the face of it as all of Scripture is about Jesus, as there is one God.

3. The Church Fathers rejected the books - but of the dozens of Church Fathers, there are only a tiny minority that didn't, and it is unclear if they themselves didn't accept them or they were saying that others didn't accept them. For instance, St. Jerome wrote that "I wasn't relating my own personal views, but rather the remarks that they [the Jews] are wont to make against us." (http://www.catholiceducation.org/en/religion-and-philosophy/apologetics/5-myths-about-7-books.html)

4. Jesus and the Apostles rejected the books - but they didn't. In fact Jesus refers to Maccabees as being a Messianic prophetic book (John 10:22-36). He also paraphrases Sirach in Mathew 7:17-20. There are other examples, but these are sufficient to dispute the claim. Nowhere do Jesus and the Apostles define or refute any canon of Scripture.

5. The books are "different" in some way (either in historical errors, discrepancies, doctrine, genre, etc.) and therefore should be rejected - but each of these arguments are arguments against many of the books of the Old Testament (and New Testament). These books are no "different" than any other book in the Bible is from any other. I won't go into specifics, as there are literally dozens of things that can be brought up, but suffice it to say that every difference you can point out in a deuterocanonical book can be found in a non-disputed book in the canon.

Should we reject all the books that are "different" in some way from some other book? In addition, there are many non-canonical books that are "similar" to canonical books - should we add them? Who decides what is "similar enough" to warrant inclusion? Again we have that issue of authority

Ultimately the historical fact is that the Pharisees removed those books, along with the entire New Testament, after Jesus' death, in order to suppress Christianity. Christians accepted those books, with few exceptions. The Christians held several councils to resolve the matter and the issue of the canon was settled in the 300s All Christians accepted them as canonical for 1200 years until Martin Luther unilaterally changed the canon. His authority was not enough to remove all the books he wanted removed (such as James, Jude, Hebrews and Revelation) but citing the Jews as authoritative he was able to make those 7 "stick."

Luther made no bones about why he wanted to change the canon - it didn't fit his theology. In fact, in the Old Testament he also wanted to jettison the Pentateuch, Job, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Jonah (he couldn't find an excuse to do so, but his commentary on these books says that he didn't consider them to be canonical). He even added the word "alone" to Romans 3:28 to make it say "For we hold that a man is justified by faith alone apart from works of law." in order to make it support his theology.

So, it seems that the real reason for dropping the apocrypha from the canon of Scripture was to change God's word to fit Luthers' word, and that is just plain wrong.

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Sound Bites

From Catholic Memes

I was asked by a Protestant friend what I would say to sum up all of Christianity in one message. What would you say?

I chose John 3:16:

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

Clearly this s bare-bones, but to me the message of Christianity is that God loves you, to the extent of giving up His Son, so that He can be with you.

My friend chose Romans 10:9 as the summation of Christianity:

if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

He considers the most important thing about Christianity to be that all you have to do is believe that Jesus rose from the dead, and you are saved, regardless of anything else.

It seems that he, and in fact all of the Protestants that I've met, when discussing the faith, concentrate only on the parts that differentiate them from the Catholic faith. Perhaps this comes from 500 years of tradition of assuming everyone is Christian, and they just need to be taught the errors of their ways if they are Catholic. Perhaps it is a way to keep themselves and their friends from slipping into Catholic ways of thought. But it does make it hard for me to agree with them on any statement of faith, even when quoting the Bible, because the quotes are always cherry picked, out of context, to emphasize something that a Catholic can't affirm.

What do I need to do to be saved? My friend quotes Romans 10:9 and says "that is all." What about Baptism (1 Peter 3:21 "Baptism now saves you") - nobody uses that sound bite, and yet it is equally true. What about Luke 18:22 "go and sell all that you have and give the money to the poor"? I haven't heard anyone quote that as the only thing you need for salvation. Or John 14:21 "Keep the commandments..." Or 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 "evildoers will not enter the kingdom."

The thing is, you can't define something like salvation in a sound bite - even one taken from the Bible. Even though our little modern minds are satisfied with sound bites and memes, reality and God are much more complicated than any one liner. And Amen! How sad would life be if the entire meaning of our existence could be summed up in a sound bite!

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Transubstantiation

I've been having yet another discussion about Transubstantiation with a Protestant - a very good man and a very smart one. And I've been thinking of a way to explain it by analogy in terms that someone who didn't believe might consider valid. The best I can come up with is the Louisiana Purchase.

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Evangelical Homosexuality

LifeSiteNews published an article last week, Homosexuality: No Truth without Love, no Love without Truth. The gist of the article is that

The homosexual rights movement understands that the evangelical church is one of the last resistance movements committed to a biblical morality. Because of this, the movement has adopted a strategy of isolating Christian opposition, and forcing change by political action and cultural pressure.

Can we count on evangelicals to remain steadfastly biblical on this issue? Not hardly. Scientific surveys and informal observation reveal that we have experienced a significant loss of conviction among youth and young adults. No moral revolution can succeed without shaping and changing the minds of young people and children.

Now, there's a lot of truth in that. The author blames the erosion of "biblical morality" on a lack of preaching, or catechesis, if you will.

Our churches must teach the basics of biblical morality to Christians who will otherwise never know that the Bible prescribes a model for sexual relationships. Young people must be told the truth about homosexuality–and taught to esteem marriage as God’s intention for human sexual relatedness.

There's only one problem with this, which became apparent in a Facebook discussion. I belong to a Facebook group, "Catholic-Protestant Debate" where the question was raised "is polygamy a sin?"

From a Catholic perspective, it is an open-and-shut case. We know that Jesus said in the synoptic Gospels "But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother [and be joined to his wife], and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate.” St. Paul tells us "Deacons may be married only once and must manage their children and their households well." We know the Church Fathers taught monogamy to be virtuous, and the Church declares this as her teaching. The Catechism says:

2387 The predicament of a man who, desiring to convert to the Gospel, is obliged to repudiate one or more wives with whom he has shared years of conjugal life, is understandable. However polygamy is not in accord with the moral law." [Conjugal] communion is radically contradicted by polygamy; this, in fact, directly negates the plan of God which was revealed from the beginning, because it is contrary to the equal personal dignity of men and women who in matrimony give themselves with a love that is total and therefore unique and exclusive."¹⁸⁰ The Christian who has previously lived in polygamy has a grave duty in justice to honor the obligations contracted in regard to his former wives and his children. 

And yet the Protestants in the group have gone on for days debating one another over interpretations of various passages, pitting Old Testament against New Testament, and arguing the authority of one book of the Bible over another.

So, not to get too far afield, assuming Protestant preachers don't shy away from teaching "Biblical morality" about homosexuality, what would they preach? I went looking for Christian resources on Biblical teaching on homosexuality and found some interesting things. For the record, Romans 1:26-27 reads:

Therefore, God handed them over to degrading passions. Their females exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the males likewise gave up natural relations with females and burned with lust for one another. Males did shameful things with males and thus received in their own persons the due penalty for their perversity.

This is far from the only psssage in the Bible condemning homosexuality, but it is one that at first glance appears to be rather clear cut. However, books don't read themselves. I was prepared for the argument I had heard before, that Paul was not a moral authority, only Jesus, and He didn't speak directly about homosexuality. I was not prepared for the arguments I found.

The Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance notes the following objections to Paul's writing:

...the persons involved in the orgy were former Christians, and were heterosexual. Romans 1 condemns them because they went against their nature -- their heterosexual orientation -- and engaged in same-gender sexual behavior. By the same reasoning, lesbians and gays who went against their fundamental nature -- their homosexual orientation -- and engaged in opposite-gender sexual behavior would also be sinning.

Wow, so it's a sin for same sex attracted people to have non-homosexual relations? The most ridiculous may be this one

in his book "The Deliverance of God." Campbell suggests that in Romans 1:18-32, Paul was presenting an argument by others that actually oppose his own beliefs.

But wait, there's more! In Pro-gay Arguments about Romans 1, the author notes several more arguments presented to refute the "traditional" reading for Romans 1:

• Paul is culture-bound, either to his Jewish culture or to the surrounding Greco-Roman culture.
• Paul borrows a legalistic list for Romans 1 that he as an anti-legalist does not fully support, just for rhetorical effect (Edwards 1984).
• Paul speaks about perversion (what heterosexually oriented folks do when they commit homosexual acts) instead of true inversion (what homosexually oriented folks do).
• we today have no reason to treat the Bible's condemnation of homosexual acts any differently than we now treat the Bible's endorsement of certain forms of slavery. "It was fine for then, but we know better now. "
• sexual acts that homosexuals do are condoned by evangelicals when done in a heterosexual marriage, so obviously it is not the acts that are at issue.
• arsenokoitai "man-bedding," and malakoi "soft" unclear, words that are usually translated "homosexual."
• Paul is condemning lust, condemning sex-centered exploitation, but not committed caring emotional same-sex relationships.

So, in other words, it's not necessarily a lack of preaching, but also what is being preached that undermines the moral authority of Protestant preachers. Without an authoritative interpreter, the Bible really can be taken to mean anything. Morality becomes a matter of tradition, not revelation.

I know Protestants like to paint a picture like they are all "one" and that Catholics are the outsiders (perhaps not even Christians at all), but the reality is the only thing any two Protestants are guaranteed to have in common is a rejection of Catholicism.

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