How can Christian Churches be Bible based when the Church predates the NT?

Question

Chippy , who was Saint Paul writing to if the Church did not already exist?

onefinefeller, thanks for adding more facts to my point. You yourself are admitting that the Church established the biblical canon and not the other way around.

Answer 1

How would you know that the Church predates the Bible without the Bible?

Answer 2

I guess the answer has to do with if you consider the bible to be a written or an oral document. The Gospels as the words of Christ predate the church or are simultaneous. (depending on when you consider the church to be founded.) While they were not written down in an orderly way till later they already existed as an oral tradition. Pauls letters were written down and are contemporaneous with the founding of the church. Though again it is later before they are collected into what we know as the bible. Since the canon of the bible was not set until the third century you could say the contemporary bible came after the church. But it is equally valid to say that everything that is in the bible existed in one form or another at the time of the founding of the church. A more tricky question is when Paul says that all scripture is good for teaching and reproof do you think he had his own writings in mind?

Hope this helps.

Answer 3

The previous testomony needless to say predates Christianity; by way of early Christian circumstances it exchange into accessible the two in Hebrew and Greek. The early church used a style of Scriptural writings, alongside with all of what we now evaluate with the aid of fact the Bible, inclusive of many different texts that would later be skipped over (the Gospel of Thomas, the Acts of Peter and Thecla, the Gospel of Judas). The Bible as all of us comprehend it incredibly is especially Pope Damasus' determination of those books made in approximately 380 advert. yet needless to say there have been gospels, letters, and thoughts lengthy earlier this. .... The thought of a Bible Church is definitely extremely exciting. initially what exchange into distinctive approximately Christianity exchange into that Christianity had a instructor (Christ), the place different religions (Judaism, and later Islam) had in basic terms a e book.

Answer 4

I belong to a Bible Based Church, the Assemblies of God, which started during a great revival in United States History in the 1800's. A fairly young Church it was created out of a need for more of God's power operating in a person's life. Requiring more of a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.

Answer 5

The Church Began in Jerusalem in AD 33

Jesus promised to build His church (Matthew 16:18). The prophets foretold the church would be built in “the last days” in Jerusalem (Isaiah 2:2,3; Joel 2:28-32). Jesus told His apostles to wait in Jerusalem for the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:4-8). The Spirit came upon them on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:1-13). Peter said this was the fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy (Acts 2:16-21). He preached the Gospel to the people. When they heard, believed, repented and were baptized, they were added by the Lord to His church (Acts 2:22-47). All today who obey the same Gospel in the same way are added by the same Lord to the same church!

The apostles were sent out to establish various congregations of the church of Christ shortly after Christ's death. The churches that you read about in the letters of Paul, Peter, Timothy, etc were to those very congregations of the church of Christ. The New Testament is comprised of those letters to the churches at Galatia, Corinth, Ephesus, etc. Therefore, the letters do NOT predate the church. The letters were designed to keep the church on the "right path" and to instruct the elders of the church on how to worship "in spirit and in truth".

Read the book of Acts to understand when and how the church of Christ was established.

Answer 6

The papacy does not deny what they did they let their follwers do that for them. Church established the biblical canon and set up the stage for what most christains worship today.

The Bible tells you that they would do it and all the world follower the beast.
Still if you try to tell them that ,they grasp their teeth crying you are hurting them.

They can not understand because Satan has promised them life.
And, there greed for life us enslaved them.

Answer 7

They ignore the founding of the Church. It is interesting that there is no biblical, theological or historical basis for such a doctrine. Under biblical teaching this kind of approach to faith and worship would be called a doctrine of men. What should we expect from churches founded by men?

In Christ
Fr. Joseph

Answer 8

Do you even know what the Bible even is? Have you studied where the canon of books come from? Have you studied the original manuscripts that we have today?

You know people get PhD's in this stuff. Why don't you do some homework and check into it? There is plenty of evidence out there for you.

Hollywood intends to re-write history but one only needs to research for themselves the validity of the claims. For example the quality of the New Testament documents can be validated outside of the Bible through the research of Josephus Flavius, Tacitus, Caesar's Gallic Wars, Herodotus, and Thucydides. In fact there are 5366 documents discovered so far to validate that the Bible we have today is 99.5% as accurate as it was way back then. For example:

The first-century Jewish historian Josephus referred to the stoning of “James, the brother of Jesus who was called the Christ.” (The Jewish Antiquities, Josephus, Book XX, sec. 200) A direct and very favorable reference to Jesus, found in Book XVIII, sections 63, 64, has been challenged by some who claim that it must have been either added later or embellished by Christians; but it is acknowledged that the vocabulary and the style are basically those of Josephus, and the passage is found in all available manuscripts.

Tacitus, a Roman historian who lived during the latter part of the first century C.E., wrote: “Christus [Latin for “Christ”], from whom the name [Christian] had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus.”—The Complete Works of Tacitus (New York, 1942), “The Annals,” Book 15, par. 44.

With reference to early non-Christian historical references to Jesus, The New Encyclopædia Britannica states: “These independent accounts prove that in ancient times even the opponents of Christianity never doubted the historicity of Jesus, which was disputed for the first time and on inadequate grounds by several authors at the end of the 18th, during the 19th, and at the beginning of the 20th centuries.”—(1976), Macropædia, Vol. 10, p. 145.

Internal evidence is pretty clear as well. 2 Peter 3:15-16 clearly states that the canon was already in the process of being collected for what we have today in the Bible. There were gnostic books but they were not accepted because they were written by Hellenistic writers that intended to change the original message of the Greek translation to imply that Jesus was not the Son of God.

Answer 9

Duh?
You wanna share some info on that?

Most Bible students will agree that the church started between 30 and 34 a.d., depending on whether you believe it began at Pentecost or with the calling of Paul. The 1st NT book came less than 10 years later and the last one less than 65 years later.

What do you base your question on?

Answer 10

Correct. By its Christ-given authority, the Catholic Church canonized the New Testament in the late 4th century. But Jesus founded His Church in the FIRST century, with Peter as the first pope. Here is a list of popes:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12272b.htm

So, the Bible is Church based: The Church is not Bible based. Among the Christian churches, only the Catholic Church has existed since the time of Jesus. Every other church is an offshoot of the Catholic Church. The Eastern Orthodox churches broke away from unity with the pope in 1054. The protestant churches were established during the Reformation, which began in 1517. Only the Catholic Church existed in the tenth century, in the fifth century, and in the first century, faithfully teaching the doctrines given by Christ to the apostles, omitting nothing.

Jesus promised, "I will build my Church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it" (Matt. 16:18). Jesus’ Church is called catholic ("universal" in Greek) because it is his gift to all people. He told his apostles to go throughout the world and make disciples of "all nations" (Matt. 28:19–20). For 2,000 years the Catholic Church has carried out this mission, preaching the good news that Christ died for all men and that he wants all of us to be members of his universal family (Gal. 3:28).
http://www.catholic.com/library/Pillar.asp