Truth.Seeker
posted on Mar 20, 2008 - 03:01 PM
exGreek,
This is a year after the last post was written in the topic, but it looks like, with the exception of Biboboy's response, the responses you got were defensive, and not complete. Biboboy's response was good, but it required much outside reading (and I would take a different approach to your question). Here it goes...
There's this old saying that doctrine is not codified until it comes under attack. It was in the fourth century that heterodoxy started to largely infiltrate into Christianity. So, it was at this time, that it was decided to "once and for all" codify what we believe in, and that would be it.
In other words, the New Testament was canonized to stand in the face of any heterodoxy that arises. The twenty seven books of the New Testament were first said to be such, i.e. the books of the NT, by St. Athanasius in 367 AD in a paschal letter while he was in exile. That same list of books was then canonized at a Synod in Rome in 382 AD and a Council of Carthage in 397 AD.
Since then, no Christian entity has questioned them. On a sidenote, our Protestant brethren question the canonicity of some of the Old Testament books that we accept.
You may have known all this, but I'm just giving the facts to set up the analysis:
The Church went through the following requirements in canonizing the books of the NT:
1) The Book be written by an Apostle.
2) The Book be consistent with the beliefs of the Church.
3) The Book be in wide circulation.
In a sense, each of those three ties back into the other two. Wide circulation assures that someone didn't just write it randomly at some place. If a book is not consistent with the beliefs of the Church, then it couldn't have been written by an apostle. Etc...
If you read Acts 15, the Apostles equate their decision on circumcision of gentiles to that of the Holy Spirit. If you read Timothy I and II, you'll see that much of this authority was passed down through the laying on of hands.
The Church cannot say "here are all the books, you figure it out," because the Church is supposed to teach. It is the responsibility of the Church to teach, edify, etc (again, in Timothy I and II). St. Paul warns Timothy against not teaching and edifying.
For those same reasons, it's not naive of the Church to say "this is it," because as I've mentioned, one of the requirements was apostolic authorship, by the fourth century the apostles had written all that they were going to write. Since the apostles wrote early on, their writings would have circulated by the fourth century (so, that was another requirement). Lastly, anything that goes against the Church's teaching was automatically wrong (because the Church received its teachings from the apostles themselves).
So, the requirements were perfect in weeding out what was wrong and keeping what was not wrong.
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A. S.
Joined: Feb 25, 2008 | Posts: 409
Anyway, the rejection of some of the gnosittic texts does not suggest that there is absolutely nothing of any merit whatsoever in them. A combination of fact and fiction, however, cannot be considered canonical.
