Table of Contents of the Bible = Unbiblical, Catholic Tradition
Posted by Tony Listi on August 16, 2010
The canon of the New Testament, i.e. the Table of Contents of the Bible, was determined by the authority of the Catholic Church. Prior to Church proclamations in the late 4th century, there were plenty of disagreements among eminent Church fathers about individual books and whether they were divinely inspired or not. These controversial individual books included some that are in the Bible today: Philippians; 1 and 2 Timothy; Titus; Philemon; Hebrews; James; 1 and 2 Peter; 1, 2, and 3 John; Jude; and Revelation.
Thus the New Testament canon, the Table of Contents page of every Bible, is indubitably an authoritative unbiblical tradition that Protestants accept in contradiction to sola Scriptura, to their own rule of faith. Scripture never contained its own Table of Contents page; that had to be authoritatively decided at the Council of Carthage in 397. Without this council, there would be no Bible as it is today.
Without the Bible as it is today, sola Scriptura is impossible. But the Protestant has to accept a 1600+ year old, binding, infallible, authoritative decree of the Catholic Church in order to get his Bible’s New Testament as it is today. This raises huge problems of internal incoherence. Protestants are forced to either make a huge exception to their rule of faith (and then one asks, on what basis do they do this?, etc.), or simply ignore the difficulties raised by discussion of the canon (the usual insincere recourse).
There’s only three options: 1) admit sola Scriptura is incoherent and thus false, 2) admit sola Scriptura is incoherent and irrationally embrace the incoherence, or 3) ignore this entire post as if you had never read it, putting your soul at risk.
creationbydesign said
Exactly right. I find that argument to be overwhelming and irrefutable.
Francis Charles P. Ocampo said
“””TABLE (sequence)””” of CONTENTS is “DIFFERENT” or “NOT the SAME” as the “””CONTENT (Word of God).”””
It DOESN’T MATTER whatever the “TABLE (sequence) of Content” is,
WHAT MATTERS is, the “CONTENT” of the Bible, if it is REALLY
the Word of God.
The Word of God (NEW Testament) CAME FROM Jesus Christ’s Mouth
and were NOT yet written UNTIL the APOSTLES.
Tony Listi said
It’s really amazing how you’ve set up a straw man argument. My argument in this post IS about content, not sequence. Table of CONTENTS.
How do we know that the books/letters in the Bible are ALL the Word of God and not just some of the books? How do we know that there have been no books/letters left out that are also the Word of God? Do you not realize that there were TONS of writings in the first centuries AD that claimed to be apostolic and authentic Scripture? Do you not realize that current books of the Bible were somewhat controversial as to their apostolic authenticity in the first centuries AD?