But LARoberts, you never answered my question about why you follow a church with the many traditions that aren’t biblical?

I’d like to know what your problem is with someone being a fundie and what makes you think that we do any of those things that you claim?
[quote:6v68f02i]have created in order to deny what Christ did and said, in founding the Church, in having been given authority to bind and loose, or in His promise to remain with the Church until the consumation of the Earth[/quote:6v68f02i]
I don’t deny any of those things. I deny nothing of what God said, but I do deny that your church is THE Church.

[quote:6v68f02i]But I guess if you want to be the only person who has the correct view, and can feel superior to everyone else, condemning them, and proclaiming that they know nothing, and you know everything, then it helps to live a life of fiction[/quote:6v68f02i]
It does help to know what te Word of God says, even for me a sinner who only did as Scriptures told us to do: test everything (1 Thessalonians 5:21)

[quote:3fqjna4g][color=blue:3fqjna4g]Do you see how your reasoning falls flat[/color:3fqjna4g]
I don’t think the Bible is wrong – NO [/quote:3fqjna4g]The Bible is not your reasoning.

[quote:3fqjna4g]But don’t you use the same “circular reasoning?”[/quote:3fqjna4g]No.

[quote:3fqjna4g]You defend Catholicism with Cstholic material and sources such as
Catholic Answers or all of the witnesses that you quote even though none are infallble,[/quote:3fqjna4g]This is both a gross ignorance of what constitutes circular reasoning and a complete non sequitur in regards to infallibility.

[quote:3fqjna4g]that is more of an example of what not to trust, then to trust in that God’s word tells us about the past, present, and future[/quote:3fqjna4g]And once again assuming the conclusion instead of proving it.

come on guys, all you can say is to say that I’m assuming my beliefs? We
know that the Bible is truth, yet you say I’m only “assuming” my stand. And we know that a math book can get outdated, have errors, occasionally somewhere over the years and needs constant updating. The same goes for the Qu’ran where it doesn’t gives you the view of the one and only God or Paul wouldn’t have told you that Scriptures were the power to save (Romans 1:16) and then you make the charge that I’m not living in the real world…. and you know something? You are right because this world has Satan as it’s leader, whereas my Home is not here. (Ephesians 2:2) It pays to know God’s word.

As Ron said

[color=red:1dbf28ky]If so, is it as my Thessalonians quote says, that it’s God’s word not the words of men?[/color:1dbf28ky]

As far as I know there is only ONE true Bible.
Our New Testament canon is identical to that of the Protestants other than some minor translation differences. Our difference lies in the contents of the Old Testament where we have Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch and additions to Esther and Daniel. These books were called apocryphal by the Protestants and deuterocanonical (Second canon) by the Catholics.This has its roots among the Jews back in the three centuries before the beginnings of the Christian Church.

There were two groups of Jews in those days. The Palestinians who worshipped in the temple, used the Hebrew Scripture (Masoretic text), and maintained a separatist religion in which contact with gentiles and Samaritans was prohibited. They had distilled 613 laws from the Torah which governed their conduct.

The other group, a majority, were the Hellenized Jews of the diaspora who lived away from Palestine. The largest centers were found in Rome, Babylon, and Alexandria, Egypt and other major cities of the Mediterranean basin. They were Greek speaking, worshipping in synagogues, and had reduced the law into three demands: circumcision, observing the Sabbath, and abstention from pork. However they also had developed a high moral code centered in the ten commandments.

Origin of the Septuagint (LXX)
During the second temple period more and more of the Diaspora had abandoned the use of Hebrew in their synagogues using Greek instead. Three centuries BCE the Jews at Alexandria asked and received permission from the high priest in Jerusalem to translate the Hebrew Bible into Greek. This was done over the next centuries and finally included the deuterocanonical books as well which they revered and read in their synagogues. This Greek Bible used by the Jews of the Diaspora was called the Septuagint (LXX).

It is most interesting that the codices of the LXX do not isolate the deuterocanonical books as a group but mixes them in with the prophets and the writings indicating that there was no awareness that they were thought to be later or foreign to an already existing Hebrew canon. It is also significant that some of these books were found in the Dead Sea Scrolls of Qumran.

In the early second century the LXX was, like the Church thrown out of the synagogue and Greek speaking Jewish Orthodoxy was supplied with a different text minus the deuterocanonicals, and was subservient to the authority of the Hebrew text and the Pharisaic scribes and Rabbis.

The Church adopts the Septuagint
When Christianity moved out of its Palestinian matrix into the Greek speaking pagan world the LXX became its Bible. Paul’s letters and other New Testament writings show quotes from the LXX. In the fifth century when Jerome made his Latin translation (Vulgate) he noted that the deuterocanonical books were not used by the Jews.

However the great doctor of the Church, Augustine, argued that on the basis of usage the majority of the Churches including the most emminent ones, accepted the Greek additions as canonical. His great stature tended to close the discussion. This reaffirmed the canonical lists of the Western Councils of Hippo (393), Carthage III (397), and Carthage IV (419) and the letter of Pope Innocent I (405) which included the Greek books.

The Reformation
Luther argued in his debates (1519) that the Bible was superior to the authority of the Church (sola Scriptura). It was while arguing against the doctrine of purgatory that this came back to haunt him. He was confronted with 2 Maccabees 12:46:

“He made atonement for the dead that they may be delivered from their sins.”
Thus pressed he argued that the Church had no right to decide matters of canonicity. He held that the internal worth of a book was the factor. He pointed out that Jerome had questioned the status of these books because the Jews didn’t use them. This was no valid argument because the Jews obviously do not use the 27 Christian books either. He refused to accept that the Church through usage and the guidance of the Holy Spirit had selected them.

In his German translation of the New Testament he relegated Hebrews, Revelation, Jude and James which he called a “strawy” epistle to the appendix. His followers later restored them to their proper place in the canon.

What is the value of these books?
First of all they are part of our Christian heritage. Our forebearers used them for sixteen centuries. These books give us an in-depth view into the religious and secular culture of those times.

Tobit and Judith are fascinating stories that enjoyed popularity in both Jewish and Christian circles.

Maccabees give us the history of the war for freedom and the pious practice of prayers for the departed.

Sirach or Ecclesiasticus meaning “Church Book” was widely used to give moral teaching to the catechumens.

Readings from Wisdom are used at funerals because of its clear teaching on immortality. This was in dispute among the Jews of the first century (Pharisees vs. Sadducees).

In response to the reformers the Council of Trent (1546) declared as inspired by the Holy Spirit those 73 books with all their parts.

How apropos. Tim Jones offers “Thought Experiment 451” on Jimmy Akin’s blog today.

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In his book Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury imagined a tyrannical, all controlling government with absolute power over the media and a deep animosity toward the written word… toward books. In this future society, people get all their information through state run radio and television, and books are prohibited. Those who secretly keep books are arrested, and all books are burned.

Let’s say that this actually comes about. Imagine that some future world government is completely successful in eliminating all books – including all copies of the Bible. Let’s add to Bradbury’s vision the proposition that this government also completely destroys all personal computers and, of course, the Internet.

Now the Bible exists only in the minds of those who know and remember it (this is actually an element of Bradbury’s story, too. The main character meets a kind of secret society, where people keep entire books alive in their heads, having memorized them verbatim). The Church goes underground, once again, her sacraments performed only in secret.

Imagine further that this oppressive regime is toppled, and that the Bible can once more be printed with freedom. The Underground Church comes out of hiding and coordinates an effort to begin printing and distributing the Bible again. The text (in several translations) is re-assembled from the memories of many people, and checked against the memories of many other people. It wouldn’t even take that long… a surprising number of people have committed whole books to memory in real life. Huge numbers of people can recite from memory individual chapters and passages.

The thought experiment is this; what authority – if any – would this new Bible have? Where would this authority come from, as far as future generations are concerned? It would be based, not on a constant, uninterrupted written tradition, but on oral tradition. Later readers, in asking how they could be sure this was the authentic text, would have to be content with the answer of the current generation…”Trust us”.

From a Catholic perspective, of course, the answer would be that this Bible would have precisely the same authority it always had, that is, the testimony of the Church (that’s all of us) that this is the Real Thing. In the long run, this is the only assurance we have to begin with. In order for there to be Holy Books, there must be a group, a society – a Church – that testifies “these are the Holy Books, and they are authentic”. When the original autographs of the Bible texts were first preserved, copied and passed on, the only assurance people had that these books were indeed authoritative and correct was the word of the Church – those who had been taught the Apostles doctrine. Letters that made the rounds during the early Church were not all assumed to be authentic and trustworthy, unless they were verified by the testimony of the Church and compared against what was already known to be the sound doctrine of the faith… in other words, they had to be in line with the Tradition handed on through the Apostles.

This is reflected in the Second Letter to the Thessalonians, where that church is warned, ” not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by some prophecy, report or letter supposed to have come from us, saying that the day of the Lord has already come.”. Later in that same chapter, they are reminded “… brothers, stand firm and hold to the teachings we passed on to you, whether by word of mouth or by letter.”. Paul later writes to Timothy, “But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it”. So, the authority of the teaching is based on Who it comes from, and not whether it is written or oral.