To the Editor:
In response to Ken Robert, “The Bible is the absolute authority.” (TDB Nov. 12, 2010, page 40), I feel I must pose a question.
What came first, the church or the Bible? The church did.
The Bible did not drop down from God by the hands of angels. It was written, by men like us, who held a reed or a pen and laboriously traced every letter.
They were divinely inspired by the Holy Spirit, but human beings nevertheless, chosen by God, for this work.
It was not written all at one time either, but over the period of 1,500 years.
The word Bible means: books from the Greek “biblia,” as in a “collection.” It was not written in English but in Hebrew: The Old Testament, and Greek, later Latin, in the New Testament.
The Bible we have now was not printed in any language at all until about 1,500 years after the birth of Christ.
What would have happened to all those poor souls that lived before the Bible was printed if Salvation depends on the Bible alone?
Was it not the apostles and disciples that heard what Jesus told them, “Go forth and teach all nations.”
He did not say read to them or give them a Bible. He meant go forth, with the “Living Word,” instruct, and convert them and by a “living tradition,” handing down the Word of God, as they had received it, to all generations.
The scripture we have handed down from the early church was given to us by the Catholic Church.
From the year 393: Council of Hippo, and in 397 at the Council of Carthage, the sacred “canon” was closed.
This is sacred tradition.
Without a governing body, the teaching authority of the church, we are left to our on ideas of what is or is not to be truth.
This remained the only sacred scripture until the 16th century.
Then Martin Luther removed seven complete books of the scripture, along with seven chapters of the Book of Ester, 66 verses of the third chapter of Daniel along with the complete 13th and 14th chapters.
He also added the word “only” to St. Paul’s doctrine, “we are justified by faith.”
Let us seek the truth and not distort history.
There is a Latin phrase that says, “Res ipsa loquitur” or “The thing speaks for itself.”
— Ann Marie Rowe