Her idea about why we trust the Bible goes a bit like this:
The originals were inspired, The originals were copied, The copies were copied, The copies were quoted and translated, and Exciting manuscript research is now going on.
Wonderful.
All this is very true.
But she leaves out one crucial thing.
When we speak of crucial, why not mention the exchange about gematria* between Epistle of Barnabas and early non-Christian rabbis? Abraham went to (was it Gehazi?) with 318 men. Now, in Greek, the letters had numeral values. 318 looks like TIH. T looks like a cross, and Tav means mark and looks even more like a cross in its oldest forms. IH are the first two letters of IHCOYC - the Greek version of Jesus. Or in genetive IHCOY. And the phrase then means "cross of Jesus", which is the real reason Abraham was victorious or successful. Rabbis answered that 318 is the numeral value of the name Eliezer, the name of Abraham's trusted servant. So, 318 men really meant Eliezer alone went down with Abraham. Now, Eliezer has a counterpart in the New Testament. Jesus also has chosen a one servant as trusted as Eliezer. St Peter.
So, when Abraham went down with 318 men, he went down under the God seen shadow of the cross of Christ, and he went down with Eliezer, who was prophetically prefiguring papacy. Not meaning there were not 317 other men too.
The crucial (or, Eliezeric, or papal) issue Lita Cosner leaves out is the role of the Church as authoritative body of teachers.
The originals were inspired, and the Church knew this.
The originals were copied, mostly not on private initiative, unlike what she imagines, but because the Church had accepted as inspired certain apostolic writings, either by apostles themselves or by certain disciples of them. These were ORDERED to be copied. In the case of Apocalypse, it was certainly copied to the bishops (early Christian term : angels, St John might have called simple priests bishops), of the Seven Churches. And since these (except perhaps the one of Laodicea**) accepted St John as being a guarantee of his writing being inspired, these ordered further copies. But of course, every bishop or series of bishops who received an epistle from Sts Peter or Paul ordered copies too. Rome received Romans from St Paul and one at least from St Peter. Corinth received two from St Paul. Bishops*** Timothy and Titus received together three from St Paul.
The copies were copied, like the originals had been, mainly because Church men required it.
The copies were quoted and translated, also because Church men wanted it. Most notably, when St Jerome translated what we know as the Vulgate, he took orders from bishops (he was just a priest himself), and while translating OT from Hebrew and himself wanting to translate only what he found a Hebrew text for (a preference which Protestants have taken from his personal preference), he obeyed the preference of the bishops to include all books of the LXX (Septuagint). Now, there were diverse versions of LXX, and St Jerome's apparently did not include III and IV Maccabees, the latter being a moral sermon by Flavius Josephus. But he did obey the Church and we do have I and II Maccabees in the Vulgate.
As for Church Fathers quoting Scripture, yes, for one thing these were usually Church men (priests like St Jerome, more often Bishops like Sts Athanasius, John Chrysostom, Augustine, Gregory of Nyssa, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nazianzus, though Bede of Jarrown was again just a priest), but even more, it is the authority of Church men which tells us how to distinguish a genuine Church Father (like those mentioned) from a writer who is not holy and not reliable (like Terence or Origen), and it were Church men who chose what aspects (if any, but like for these two) one could accept (like Mariology of Origen, but not his idea of Apokastasis ton Panton).
The last part, and Exciting manuscript research is now going on. Sure. Some of it on orders of Church men. But it is less important than the Tradition of the Church.
For instance, some have found very old manuscripts in Sinai or elsewhere, which here and there lack a verse. We do not go by manuscript research and say those verses were later additions. We go by the tradition of the Church and say these verses belonged there. If they missed in that manuscript, this may be due to having been written by some sect and then taken hold of, or may be a mistake by a copyist, who may have been a moralist or sth, and the mistake was why the manuscript was left unused in a corner, which was why it was preserved so long and so well.
So, when we trust God to have preserved His Word, we trust Him to have preserved the original Church (visible body, not abstract total of all real Christians dispersed through different ones) which He originally spoke to. If you say, God could have preserved His Word without the Church, we answer, He could and did preserve His Church too, and His Word mainly through it. Or through Her.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Vigil of Sts Simon and Jude
27-X-2015
CMI : Has the New Testament been corrupted?
by Lita Cosner
Published: 27 October 2015
http://creation.com/nt-manuscripts
* See the article Gematria in Encyclopædia Judaica.
** A council of Laodicea some centuries later gives a list of books from which readings are to be made during Holy Mass and Hours. Apocalypse of St John is not among these. However, even in the West, reading Apocalypse was more done by lectio continua by monks reading it in private. Than by public reading of its texts in Church.
*** These were functionally bishops, but there was at first no one accepted name for these, after these included more than the Apostles. The word "bishop" in the letters seems to mean "priest" rather than what we call bishop. For instance, they could be married. On the other hand, someone has said that only later celibacy was required before becoming a bishop.
tisdag 27 oktober 2015
måndag 5 oktober 2015
2 Timothy 3:16
1) Creation vs. Evolution : CMI and Reformers, *sigh* , 2) Great Bishop of Geneva! : 2 Timothy 3:16, 3) HGL's F.B. writings : With Matt Singleton on LXX/"Apocrypha" and on liquor in moderation, 4) Great Bishop of Geneva! : In defense of Jay Dyer's Objections from Back Then
First of all - "all Scripture" does not mean "all mistranslations of Scripture" like the two modifications Dr Martin Luther defended in his Sendbrief vom Dolmetzschen. Romans 3:28 and Luke 1:28 are indeed part of it, but Luther's versions of them are not.
Second, "all A is B" does NOT mean "all B is A". For example, "all dogs are mammals" does NOT mean "all mammals are dogs".
A statement like "all A is/are B" is unsymmetrical and should definitely NOT be symbolised by the symmetrical A = B.
Now, there is a third point, which is not so much directed against Protestantism in general as against a very Modernist type of it.
slacktivist : The symmetric property of 2 Timothy 3:16
www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2015/10/05/the-symmetric-property-of-2-timothy-316/
It is that when the B of "all A is/are B" refers to a list, it does not reduce A to just one item on the list.
McGrath seems to have made a point that appealed to slacktivist. Here he gives the quote, including following verse:
All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in justice, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.
Now, McGrath continues to be cited with approval:
That reinforces and amplifies McGrath’s point. This isn’t about doctrine or dogma, but about behavior — about “training people in living a particular way.”
Is that so?
First of all "every good work" might include also good works on the intellectual field, like today creationism or, as on this blog, apologetics against the Protestant errors (see my observations 1 and 2). But then it seems to be some kind of sloppy reading.
Justice is indeed about behaviour. And actually in many ways about the behaviour called righteousness. Not towsing before marriage is usually a rule neglected by people clamouring for justice, and yet it is eminently just. It is just towards God not to abuse intercourse by preventing conception. Since God had a specific goal in view, see Genesis 1:28. But it is also just towards the neighbour, the child one is possibly procreating, to make a good two-person and these of different sexes and also related to the child arrangement for its raising. It is called marriage.
Now, "justice" was one item on a list.
useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in justice
So, behaviour was one part of the list, but not all of it.
- useful for teaching,
- This means doctrine and dogma!
- for reproof,
- This means apologetics.
- for correction,
- This means pastoral and fraternal correction.
- and for training in justice
- Now, this last one actually means behaviour.
I looked up the Greek word for "training". Nestlé Aland is good. Here is the end of the verse: πρὸς παιδείαν τὴν ἐν δικαιοσύνῃ, and paideia does not quite as strongly as askesis suggest things like fasting and praying. But obviously Scripture is very useful for that too, at least if you count Gospels as part of it. Again, something like "righteousness" and not just sth like modern meaning range for "justice".
Note that paideia does suggest another thing. Scripture does not contain all the good works there are by description. It "inspires" every kind of them, and "inspires" most of those found in the lives of the saints, but some of the actual complexities of deeds, like founding monasteries, are not directly in Divine Scripture. This was a paideia, a propaedeutic, a paedagogy for them. Like playing études is for playing sonatas. Like learning multiplication tables are for doing useful maths, and so on.
But here too, we are once again confronted with doctrine. St Dominic and St Thomas were doing as good works precisely the kind which is concerned with teaching and reproof, mostly by converting or helping others to convert Albigensians. A k a Manichees. And the patron of this blog was doing the same when it came to the poor Calvinists in Chablais. 2 Tim 3:16-17 is indeed concerned with doctrine. McGrath got that all wrong.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre University Library
St Placidus and Companions*
5-X-2015
* Messanae, in Sicilia, natalis sanctorum Martyrum Placidi Monachi, e beati Benedicti Abbatis discipulis, et ejus fratrum Eutychii et Victorini, ac sororis eorum Flaviae Virginis, itemque Donati, Firmati Diaconi, Fausti et aliorum triginta Monachorum, qui omnes a Manucha pirata, pro Christi fide, necati sunt.
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