[quote]KingKai25 wrote:
[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
Honestly, this is one of the most difficult issues in the history of early Christianity.
Pat, I agree that if you recognize the authority of the canon AS canon (i.e., as a divinely instituted assemblage of texts to which nothing can be added or subtracted) then there is no legitimate way to get around the necessary authority of the church that assembled it. The only option is special pleading - “yes, the church lacks authority, but the canon it assembled is authoritative.” Such arguments invariably resort to special pleading. And in truth, there were no canons before the late second century A.D., in the sense of a fixed corpus to which nothing could be added or subtracted (and the evidence for the existence of canons in the second century depends on a SINGLE example which, based on linguistic issues, is potentially from the fourth century A.D.).
That being said, its not the canon AS canon that I consider authoritative, but the texts contained therein, and those texts were considered authoritative Scripture LONG BEFORE they were officially canonized. There is evidence within the biblical texts themselves that the New Testament texts (specifically the gospels and the Pauline epistles) were considered Scripture while the apostles were still living. The inspiration and authority of the New Testament TEXTS exists independently of their recognition by the post-first century church.
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No disagreement here.
[quote] This is a very nuanced point, but its central to my point. Now as I said in a previous post, since I recognize the authority of the texts included in the canon without recognizing the canonization process itself as authoritative, I do not recognize the canon’s closure a priori. I don’t believe that we will find other letters of Paul or other gospels considered authoritative in the first century that somehow got lost; the earliest Christians did an excellent job of preserving those texts considered authoritative from the apostolic period (1st century A.D.).
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And to that point. other texts do and did exist whom some considered as authoritative as the texts that ended up in the Canon. Not all of them were weird or heretical, some just for some reason, didn’t cut the mustard. This was derived by the authority of the synod at the time.
They weren’t trying to necessarily deriving the actual date, per se. They recognized the fact that they didn’t know and hence did not pin it down to a date. But they also recognized that since salvation and the church is rooted in the death and Resurrection of Jesus, it was right to celebrate it as it is the reason for the church. Further, it was in conjunction with Passover on purpose. Since they did not know the date, the aligned it with Passover. This allowed converts to hold fast somewhat to the traditions they were used to, but celebrate Christianity instead of Judaism. Same thing with Christmas, the date was not chosen because it was thought that Christ was born in December. Sometime in the spring is more accurate. But it stole the thunder of the pagan celebrations of the solstice and turned it into a Christian holiday. This was actually pretty normal for the church to do, take old traditions and change them in the Christian celebrations. It was seen as a conquering of the old with the new, beating the Pagan ways or Jewish ways with the Christian ways…It’s actually very much the same reason why they took all the marble from the Colosseum. To use that which was used to kill Christians, instead to build the Vatican. That and they need a lot of marble and the Colosseum just happened to have a lot.
Further, this is not totally without apostolic precedent in that in Acts the apostles were already celebrating Pentecost. So the church determining feast days was already in effect in apostolic times. Further, further, since the entire world, Christian and otherwise recognize these feast days, I’d say there was some authority there.
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That being said, all the distinctive Catholic doctrines were there by the end of the first century/early second century, Tirib. All of them. The eucharist was described in the Didache, Clement, Ignatius, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, etc. as a physical sacrifice; the veneration of Mary and the cult of the martyrs also predate the formation of the canon. The post-NT church was essentially the Catholic church. [/quote]
The question of authority basically boils down to two things. Scripture and apostolic succession. By the authority of the apostolic succession we got the Bible cannon as the authoritative source for all matters of faith. In scripture we received the authority of apostolic succession. For Jesus gave commands to the discipleship, “Go make disciples of all the nations in the Name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit”, “you will be my witnesses…to the ends of the Earth”, “What you declare loosed on Earth…”, etc. The disciples, in turn gave this authority to their successors and so on down the line to present days…
Now people may disagree with what the successors have done over the years, but I cannot point to a single event in history where this succession was broken. Luther, Calvin, or who ever reformer you choose, may have broken from the church, but they did not break that succession. Remember that most of the reformers were men and they did not even dare to claim they were divinely inspired or that the Holy Spirit was responsible for their pronouncements. There declarations were academic, not based in a prophetic guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Honestly, I cannot see authority being a big point of debate. The scriptures and the history back it up. Perhaps, with some points of dispute, but no major ones, not major enough to break the apostolic succession.
That doesn’t mean that all did well with it, Jesus had his Judas, and hence in His church, Judas was also succeeded through out the years, but for all the bumps and bruises, the succession remained in tact.
