RE: Hi, I'm a Christian. Help Me Disprove My Religion!
September 25, 2015 at 5:04 pm
(This post was last modified: September 25, 2015 at 5:05 pm by Randy Carson.)
(September 25, 2015 at 5:52 am)pocaracas Wrote:(September 25, 2015 at 4:50 am)Randy Carson Wrote: Not to interrupt a great discussion, but what books would be left - in your "canon", so to speak?
Just going from Aractus' reply here:
- The 7 undisputed from Paul: Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon.
- 2 Thessalonians can be included
- Epistles of James and Jude
And... I can't see any other.
So, Randy, I deffer to your knowledge: what sort of christianity does that leave us with?
Essentially the same that we see today and for this reason: Jesus founded an infallible Church which existed long BEFORE the NT was written or formally canonized. So, even without it, the Oral Tradition of the Church would be sufficient to pass along the core message just as it was long before the invention of the printing press.
However, if you are asking whether there are any doctrines that would be missing as a result of removing specific books from the Bible, again, I say that because the writings of the NT were a reflection of what the Church was preaching and teaching orally (ie, baptism of infants, confession of sins to a priest, the real presence in the Eucharist, etc.), everything that we have today was present in the Early Church before inscripturation.
IOW, the NT authors captured on paper what the Church was already preaching; they did not add to what the Church already knew.
