Sunday, December 19, 2010

Authority of Bible: How can we trust that the Bible is inerrant word of God? 1


HOW WE GOT THE BIBLE
CANONICITY: WHO DECIDED WHAT TO INCLUDE IN THE BIBLE?
Many people believe that the Church (especially the Catholic Church) had a human agenda to fulfill in their canonizing of the Bible. They claim that the popes and those in authority gathered pieces of sacred literature to propagate a certain agenda and maintain the church’s political control. Yet nothing is further from the truth. The fact is that the church did not decide which books to include in the canon. A better way to put it would be that the church merely passively recognized which books were marked by the inspiration of God and were already in use by the community of believers. Simply put, it means that they had no part in any way of editorializing the content of the text; they didn’t fiddle around with the internal words, narrative, and history within Scripture nor did they make up stories that were not true. There was no addition of new writings or subtraction of portions of Scripture during the canonization process.

5 principles to recognize whether the book was inspired by God (Rule of faith)

1. Was it written by a prophet of God?

2. Was the writer confirmed by acts of God? This sometimes included miracles. Miracles were often the way God confirmed His message given to the prophet.

3. Did the message tell the truth about God? Anything that went in contradiction to the knowledge of God was thrown out.

4. Was it powerful and transformative? Did it have the power to transform a person’s life?

5. Was it accepted by the church? Was it widely used and recognized by the church?

*It was never some council that determined what books were to be read but the community of Christians already practicing their faith that recognized the transformative power of the text and gradually as time passed came to accept the writings as being normative to their faith.

What was the need for canonization?
1. They were prophetic
2. Early Church needed to know which books to be read, revered, to apply to their often hostile social religious environment. They needed to know how to apply the teachings in their daily lives.
3. Rise of Heretics- Marcion tried to come up with his own canon. The Church needed to counter his influence by gathering which books were canonical.

4. The existence of many other false writings circulating around.

5. Need for missions encouraged translation of books in other languages. They needed to know which ones were canonical in order to translate them to other languages.

6. Persecution. Diocletian called for destruction of Christian sacred books.
Many people have tried to destroy the Bible, but have failed.
The Bible enemies come and go, but the Bible remains. Jesus was right when He said, ‘Heaven earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away’” (Mark 13:31 NKJV)

H.L. Hasting:
If this book had not been the book of God, men would have destroyed it long ago. Emperors and popes, kings and priests, princes and rulers have all tried their hand at it; they die and the book still lives. (Lea, GBW, 17-18).

The 27 books of New Testament were first canonized in 393 AD Synod of Hippo. There has been no conflict or dilemma since that time regarding the authority and canonicity of these 27 books.

OLD TESTAMENT CANON
Jamnia Theory: AD 90. Council of rabbis got together in Jamnia to finally agree upon which books be included in the Hebrew canon. Their concern was the right of certain books to remain in the canon, not acceptance of new books. “No human authority and no council of rabbis ever made and [Old Testament] book authoritative. It was recognizing God’s stamp of authority- divine authority in them.

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