by jimwalton » Wed Dec 09, 2020 3:41 pm
> and the Catholic Church determines the contents of the bible
This is where your thought goes off the rails. The Old Testament was canonized by about 200 BC, long before the Catholic Church was in existence. The writings of the New Testament were recognized as authoritative from the time of their writing. No Gospel or letters of Paul were in doubt as to their authority as Scripture.
In the 300s, the Catholic Church solidified what had been recognized as Scripture. The deliberations of the Church during this time involved recognizing the books given by God rather than deciding what books to include. The difference is a subtle but important one. The books of the New Testament are not Scripture because the church said they were, but are Scripture because from the time of their composition they bore the mark of divine authority. The New Testament, and in fact the Bible as a whole, is thus a list of authoritative writings rather than an authoritative list of writings.
> would it be possible to say there is missing information?
What we believe is that God superintended the process of the assemblage of the canon. We know there were at least two other letters that Paul wrote to the Corinthians, but they're lost. I once asked my Bible professor, "But what if those were discovered today? Would they be inserted into the New Testament?" His answer was, "No. We'd love to have them and they would be fascinating to read, but we believe that they are missing (and have been missing this long) because God didn't intend them to be in the Bible, even though Paul wrote them."
> I know the bible is the Church attempting to depict what the biblical writers originally wrote.
This statement is not true. The Bible is not the Church attempting to depict what the biblical writers wrote. Instead, the Bible is the compendium of what the biblical writers actually wrote kept together by the Church. Perhaps an analogy will help: Suppose my wife writes me a serious of delicious love letters, and I choose to keep them in a folder. Am I doing that to depict what she actually wrote, or just to preserve them? It's the latter.
> But if it has been passed down through the word of mouth,
The time of oral transmission was relatively short (a few decades). And if the theories about Q are correct, it's shorter than we give credit (not knowing when Q was written).
> put into a written form and then several adaptions were made
To what adaptations are you referring? Our embarrassing quantity of manuscripts can probably put us within about 98% accuracy of the original text, and that's what we use as the authoritative text. What "adaptations" are you talking about?
> would it be possible to say information would've been lost or just not given to us?
No.
> and the Catholic Church determines the contents of the bible
This is where your thought goes off the rails. The Old Testament was canonized by about 200 BC, long before the Catholic Church was in existence. The writings of the New Testament were recognized as authoritative from the time of their writing. No Gospel or letters of Paul were in doubt as to their authority as Scripture.
In the 300s, the Catholic Church solidified what had been recognized as Scripture. The deliberations of the Church during this time involved recognizing the books given by God rather than deciding what books to include. The difference is a subtle but important one. The books of the New Testament are not Scripture because the church said they were, but are Scripture because from the time of their composition they bore the mark of divine authority. The New Testament, and in fact the Bible as a whole, is thus a list of authoritative writings rather than an authoritative list of writings.
> would it be possible to say there is missing information?
What we believe is that God superintended the process of the assemblage of the canon. We know there were at least two other letters that Paul wrote to the Corinthians, but they're lost. I once asked my Bible professor, "But what if those were discovered today? Would they be inserted into the New Testament?" His answer was, "No. We'd love to have them and they would be fascinating to read, but we believe that they are missing (and have been missing this long) because God didn't intend them to be in the Bible, even though Paul wrote them."
> I know the bible is the Church attempting to depict what the biblical writers originally wrote.
This statement is not true. The Bible is not the Church attempting to depict what the biblical writers wrote. Instead, the Bible is the compendium of what the biblical writers actually wrote kept together by the Church. Perhaps an analogy will help: Suppose my wife writes me a serious of delicious love letters, and I choose to keep them in a folder. Am I doing that to depict what she actually wrote, or just to preserve them? It's the latter.
> But if it has been passed down through the word of mouth,
The time of oral transmission was relatively short (a few decades). And if the theories about Q are correct, it's shorter than we give credit (not knowing when Q was written).
> put into a written form and then several adaptions were made
To what adaptations are you referring? Our embarrassing quantity of manuscripts can probably put us within about 98% accuracy of the original text, and that's what we use as the authoritative text. What "adaptations" are you talking about?
> would it be possible to say information would've been lost or just not given to us?
No.