For Protestants: Without the Catholic Church how would you know what books are in the Bible?

Question

The Catholic Church existed befor the written New Testament.
All the Apostles and disciples were Catholic.

Protestants appeared only 1500 years later.

The Jews certainly didn't give you the New Testament as they rejected it.

The first Catholic Christians were of course of Jewish extraction.

Christ who is God made some changes to the torah or rather made it more strict.He has the authority to do that because he's the divine lawgiver himself. Catholics follow the new commandments of Christ and not the Old Law.

Answer 1

Chris, I didn't realize anyone could be that oblivious to historical facts. But I suppose anyone who doesn't study it can't know it.

The Catholic Church is historically documented as existing about 290 years before the Bible was even canonized. And that is just documentation of the word "Catholic" - though we know the Church existed even earlier. As far as the Catholic Church keeping people from reading the Bible, let me fill you in on that --

First, an open-minded investigator will note 1 Timothy 3:15: "the Church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of truth." The church is called to instruct believers in God's word (Luke 24:32, Acts 8:30-31, 2Pet. 1:20, 3:16), to lead people "into all truth" (John 16:13), and to proclaim John's words: "If anyone adds . . . takes away from the words of this prophetic book, God will take away his share in the tree of life" (Rev. 22:18-19). Clearly, God didn't want man adding to or taking away from the Bible, yet Tyndale, Luther, and other Protestants did just that, by adding words and taking away seven whole books and parts of two others from the Bible that Christians had used since there first was a Bible!

To protect people from corrupted Bibles being used unscripturally to divide Christians (John 17:20-21), the Church for a time followed the zealous example of Acts 19:19 of burning these books.

True copies of the Bible were chained to lecterns in churches and libraries so they wouldn't be stolen and would be AVAILABLE TO ANYONE, even the poor, who wanted to read God's holy Word.

Anyone who accuses the Church of suppressing the Bible must answer these questions:

Why did Catholic monks hand-copy the Bible, preserving God's Word during the fifteen centuries before printing?

Didn't the inventor of printing, Gutenburg (a Catholic), first print a Bible?

Haven't Catholics read the Bible aloud at daily Mass in their churches for twenty centuries?

Nice try Chris, but I've read MUCH MUCH more than you have. Come back when you have some solid facts and a little knowledge under your belt.

Answer 2

The Catholic Church claims that it gave us the Bible. The Old Testament was written by God's inspired prophets, patriarchs, psalmists, judges, and kings. It was faithfully copied and preserved by Jewish scribes. The Old Testament of Protestant Bibles contains the same books as the Hebrew Bible. The New Testament was written by Christian apostles. None of them were Catholics, because there was no RCC at the time. This was more than two centuries before Constantine and Bishop Silvester joined together to create the RCC. The New Testament was not formed by the decision of any Church council. The Council of Carthage (397 A.D.) listed as canonical "only those books that were generally regarded by the consensus of use as properly a canon." In other words, it didn't create the canon, it confirmed the identity of the canon. The RCC did not give us the Bible. In 1548 it added the Apocrypha to the Bible. The apocryphal books contain passages used to justify Catholic doctrines, such as praying for the dead, and the giving of alms as a means for salvation instead of Christ alone.

Answer 3

If it wasn't for the Holy Spirit working through the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, you would not know either.

The Catholic Church places Scripture below tradition, so why do you even care? This certainly sounds like another case of ecclesiastic penis envy, (my Church is better than yours).
All non-RC's know this is what your Church teaches, we have heard it a thousand times before.

I'm sorry, if this sounds a little ranty, but so does your question. Catholic means universal, the Bible is clear that all who have faith in Christ ARE his Church. (universal, catholic).

I'm a Confessional Lutheran, Your Bible is our Bible, your Creeds are our Creeds, The Doctors, and Fathers of the Church that affirmed what the Bible is are the same Doctors, and Fathers that we have. Likewise we also accept ALL of the Ecumenical Councils up to the Council of Trent. That's because that Council is where the Roman Catholic Church created us Lutherans by excommunicating us. (we never left the "RCC").

The only thing we ever protested were abuses and false doctrines. Most of which have been fixed, but there are still some.

You would do well to spend more time reading your personal property; the Bible, and less time lording it over everyone else who puts that Bible first.

Mark

Answer 4

There are so many errors in this rant that I am not sure where to begin.

The disciples were NOT Catholic. They were most likely Eastern Orthodox.

The Greek Church predates the Latin Church. You have been fed false propaganda. The concept of the "Pope" as such, did not exist before medieval times. The Eastern orthodox churches sill do not consider the Bishop of Rome to be the head of all the church, and never did.

Most of the books of the Bible were decided by church counsels, NOT the Pope sitting in Rome. You have been misinformed.

The New Testament is composed, for the most part, from letters written by the Apostles. So the Bible is self -authenticating, since the apostles were prophets from God. No church was needed to figure that out. The Church did not make the cannon; the church acknowledged the cannon.

Answer 5

Great question. Though religious, it is actually an exercise in historical research rather than religious debate. The facts are that despite the 27 books of the NT, there were hundreds of other Christian writings in existence. There were some 50 gospels floating around, too. Why don't Protestants acknowledge this?

The development of the NT was a process of discernment. Protestants, however, act as if the 27 books were the only ones around and claim the Church simply "approved what was already there". Well, to claim that is to ignore hard evidence, which leads me to begin questioning their motives and/or mental stability.

So then, I jump to your question: without the Catholic Church, how would they know which books to include in the bible?

Now we're into Church authority. Though they will NOT acknowledge it, the hidden truth is that they do even if they don't realize it. Everytime they study from, read, and/or hail the bible as the Inspired Word of God (which it is), they are acknowledging the divine authority of the Catholic Church, authority that was given to Her by Jesus Christ, authority which discerned and canonized the NT.

End of discussion.

God bless.

Answer 6

That's using the word "Catholic" either disingenuously, or in a complete void of historical knowledge. In the early years of the church, it simply meant "universal," and during Athanasius' "Contra Mundum" controversy (a nascent battle over Sola Scriptura) it even included Arians! To employ the word "Catholic" this way, you must rely on the unproven assumption that the distinctives of the Roman See were the defining attributes of the entire valid membership of the earliest church bodies, then use that hidden assumption to claim authority over the Biblical canon. Poor reasoning. At best, the early church was like a stem cell, containing the potential to acquire a specific character, but not really differentiating into the specialized subgroups recognized today till much later. Constantine helped narrow one variety of that prototypical church into a highly political entity riddled with practices borrowed directly from Mithraism. To impose the theology of the present line of Rome back into the less well-defined categories of the early Christian thinkers is, as they say, anachronistic at best. Therefore, when you use the modern denominational label "Catholic" as if all that it implies *today* was true of the early church as they deliberated on the Biblical canon, you are swapping the meaning underlying the term (as in “shell game”), and I cannot believe anyone familiar with church history could making such an assertion without blushing just a little. Those without such familiarity should hesitate to make such assertions at all. Truth matters.

Edit:

Randy, I respectfully disagree with you in part. As Eastern Orthodoxy had, like Rome, not yet distinguished itself from the prototypical church, it is simply misleading to cast such labels back in time and try and make them stick to the rather more generic Christianity of the primitive era.

Danny, you are engaged in the very same definition switching of which I am speaking. Yes, the "universal church" discerned the true content of the canon, but that entity is not the historical equivalent of the Roman See. Furthermore, it did not create that canonicity by fiat. If Baptists, Protestants and Catholics (and yes, Eastern Orthodox) can all agree that through our shared heritage we all came to recognize God's imprimatur on certain records of the faithful, wouldn't that be a good thing? Yes. But would it prove whose institutional authority was greatest as among these several offspring of the early church? Hardly. If indeed we are all children of the same Gospel, we should not quarrel who is the greatest among us. I seem to recall a certain *canonical* prohibition against such bickering.

Answer 7

the catholic church i would say is the oldest church in the world, i would say after the old testament, then christ came and made the beginning of the new testament, i would say because of people were misunderstanding the old testament, then christ came, to make the beginning of a new covenant, which is christianity, that is why christ was born.

Answer 8

If it is from the devil leave it alone and it will fail, but if it is from God it will not fail. The bible would of made its way by some one.it states in the bible that if we didn't preach about him he would have the stones cry it out.

Answer 9

You assert that they (the apostles) were Catholic; prove it (by scripture)!!!
Second; Why did the 'Catholic church' (I went to a RCC for a bit before and during RCIA) change what was taught to Jews, and Christians? (The lack of applying the principle (2 or more witnesses Jews Deut. 10-20, Christians Matt. 18:16, 2 Cor. 13:1, and limit to what God said (Joshua 1, 2 Tim. 3:16-17) (not corrected in this country by many Protestant groups currently) to God's disgust, is causing division in 'Christianity' here.

Answer 10

Because they make it up to suite their fancy none of the protestants have the same doctrine each church has different beliefs all are unsaved and not christian