Untitled Sermon (3)

decree concerning the canonical scriptures

How do the Catholics see the Gpspel?

‎which [Gospel], before promised through the prophets in the holy Scriptures,

‎first promulgated with His own mouth,

‎then commanded to be preached by His apostles to every creature, as the fountain both of every saving truth, and discipline of morals;

‎perceiving that this truth and discipline are contained in the written books

‎the unwritten traditions which, received by the apostles from the mouth of Christ himself, or from the apostles themselves,

‎How did the scripture come to them?

‎he Holy Ghost dictating, have come down even unto us, transmitted as it were from hand to hand;

‎[the synod] following the examples of the orthodox fathers, receives and venerates with equal affection of piety, and reverence, all the books both of the Old and of the New Testament,—seeing that one God is the author of both, as also the said traditions, as well those appertaining to faith as to morals, as having been dictated, either by Christ’s own word of mouth, or by the Holy Ghost, and preserved by a continuous succession in the Catholic Church.

‎and preserved by a continuous succession in the Catholic Church. And it has thought it meet that a catalogue of the sacred books be inserted in this decree, lest doubt arise in any one’s mind as to which are the books that are received by this synod.

‎But if any one receive not, as sacred and canonical, these same books entire with all their parts, as they have been used to be read in the Catholic Church, and as they are contained in the old Latin vulgate edition; and knowingly and deliberately despise the traditions aforesaid; let him be anathema.

Which edtion of the Scared books Chatholic church accepts?

‎Moreover, the same sacred and holy synod, considering that no little utility may accrue to the Church of God, if, out of all the Latin editions, now in circulation of the sacred books, it be known which is to be held as authentic, ordains and declares, that the said old and vulgate edition, which, by the long usage of so many ages, has been approved in the Church, be, in public lectures, disputations, preachings, and expositions, held as authentic; and that no one is to dare, or presume to reject it under any pretext soever.

‎Furthermore, in order to restrain petulant spirits, It decrees, that no one, relying on his own skill, shall, in matters of faith, and of morals pertaining to the edification of Christian doctrine, wresting the sacred Scripture to his own senses, dare to interpret the said sacred Scripture contrary to that sense which holy mother Church, whose it is to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the holy Scriptures, hath held and doth hold; or even contrary to the unanimous consent of the Fathers; even though suchlike interpretations were never [intended] to be at any time published. They who shall contravene shall be made known by their ordinaries, and be punished with the penalties by law established.

‎And wishing also, as is just, to impose a restraint in this matter upon printers, who now, without restraint, that is, thinking that whatsoever they please is allowable, print, without the license of ecclesiastical superiors, the said books of sacred Scripture, and the annotations and expositions upon them of all persons indifferently, with the press,

It decrees, that … by law established.

The Canon

Where do we locate the Canon?

"...the Christian canon has been drawn firmly within the sphere of religious history." John Webster, Word and Church: Essays in Christian Dogmatics (Edinburgh; New York: T&T Clark, 2001), 9.

This is done "as a consequence of the explanatory successes of the application of critical-historical and comparative methods, the Christian canon has been drawn firmly within the sphere of religious history." John Webster, Word and Church: Essays in Christian Dogmatics (Edinburgh; New York: T&T Clark, 2001), 9.

The Caonon is viewed like theology of the Bible as part of the history of the religion.

The term holy as applied to the Canon will be lesss and less impotrant.

Thei view is seen by John Webster as misclocation of the the doctrine of the Scripture from the saving ecconmy of the the truine God.

The act of God at the time of the writing of Scripture

Aren't we trying to discover the acts of God when we study the authrs intetn and the the hisprical background of the text?

Sola Scriptura cnnot be seen aside from the solus Deus

Solus Christu, Sola Scriptura and Sola Verbo all of them are extentions of the soul Deus

ፓፕያስ ስለ ኦራል ታርዲሽንና ስለ መጻሕፍት የነበረው አስተያየት

As late as the second century, for example, Papias could still say that he preferred oral communications about Jesus to the written messages of books: “For I did not suppose that information from books would help me so much as the word of a living and surviving voice” (Eusebius, , LCL).10 Although he did not reject written traditions about Jesus, it is clear that he preferred oral tradition. According to F. C. Baur, Papias appears to have wanted “to keep the immediacy of the original revelation as a present reality by clinging to the living word, not to the dead, transient written text.”

McDonald, L. M. (2011). The Biblical Canon: Its Origin, Transmission, and Authority (pp. 246–247). Grand Rapids, MI: Hendrickson Publishers.

ፕሌቶና ፈሪሳውያን በጽሑፍ ከሚቀርብ ይልቅ በቃል የሚነገር ይበልጣል ብለው ያምናሉ

Barr makes the interesting observation that both Plato and the Pharisees had a “cultural presupposition” that the writing down of a profound truth was “an unworthy mode of transmission.” Plato, telling the words of Socrates to Phaedrus, shows concern that the mere writing of something will adversely affect the superior ability of the mind to memorize:

For this invention [writing] will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them.…

He who thinks, then, that he has left behind him any art in writing, and he who receives it in the belief that anything in writing will be clear and certain, would be an utterly simple person, and in truth ignorant of the prophecy of Ammon, if he thinks written words are of any use except to remind him who knows the matter about which they are written. (Plato, , LCL)

McDonald, L. M. (2011). The Biblical Canon: Its Origin, Transmission, and Authority (p. 247). Grand Rapids, MI: Hendrickson Publishers.

አይሁዳውያን ረቢዎች በቃል ለሚተላለፍ ለእግዚአብሔር ቃል ያላቸው አቋም

The rabbis had several sayings that suggested that the “oral Torah” ought not to be put into writing (; ). Because Jesus neither wrote nor commanded his disciples to write anything down, Barr concludes that the “idea of a Christian faith governed by Christian written holy Scriptures was not an essential part of the foundation plan of Christianity.”14 The church passed on this “living witness” of Jesus the Christ first through the apostles and subsequently through prophets and teachers, who continued to have a significant role in the Christian community well into the second century. Even in the late second century, the Christians had a great deal of appreciation for the oral tradition of the church.

McDonald, L. M. (2011). The Biblical Canon: Its Origin, Transmission, and Authority (p. 247). Grand Rapids, MI: Hendrickson Publishers.

አይርኔየስ ስለ መጻሕፍት ያለው አቋም

Irenaeus, though strongly committed to a fixed written tradition, believed that the Christian community would have preserved its message accurately even if there had been no written Gospels:

McDonald, L. M. (2011). The Biblical Canon: Its Origin, Transmission, and Authority (p. 248). Grand Rapids, MI: Hendrickson Publishers.

መጽሀፍ ቅዱስ ስህተት ሊኖረው ይቻላልን?

"If Scripture is viewed as a book with some error, it no longer stands as an independent authority, and the person who decides what is true and what is in error becomes the real authority." Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 20, no. 1 (1977): 29.

የመጽሐፍ ቅዱስ ስልጣን ወይንስ የቲዎሎጂ ስልጣን?

ከመጽሀፍ ቅዱስ ሌላ ስልጣን የሚሰጠው ማን ነው? ምንድር ነው?

Differnet concepts

Propostionalist

Narrativist

Expresstionist

Propostionalist

Experince Expressionist

Cultural Lingustic (Theo- dramatic continuity)

Tradtion

The diversity nature of understanding

Purpose of tradtion is madiation of the past

It handes down Bible

It handes down interpretation of the Bible

It passes on the doctrine

Poblem of transmition

The past cannot be transmited as it is becuase of change

The past becomes the other for the presenet

Otherness of the past obsecures the the understanding

Evangelical and Critical approach

Why the dcoumentary hypothesis is is not accepted by Evangelicals

(1) it denied the Mosaic authorship of Genesis (which was assumed to be asserted in the Bible [e.g., ]); (2) to a considerable extent it based the dissection of the narrative into sections from different sources on the exposure of discrepancies and contradictions between different texts; and (3) it tended to ignore the divine authority of the text

I. Howard Marshall, Kevin J. Vanhoozer, and Stanley E. Porter, Beyond the Bible: Moving from Scripture to Theology, Acadia Studies in Bible and Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004), 17.

Evangelicals way of studying the the Bible

Essentially, exegesis was carried on perfectly properly by linguistic and syntactical study to discover what the text was saying. Background information was drawn upon to explain it. There was, however, a tendency to focus on elucidating the details of the text verse by verse rather than to look at larger units of text and their total thrust.

I. Howard Marshall, Kevin J. Vanhoozer, and Stanley E. Porter, Beyond the Bible: Moving from Scripture to Theology, Acadia Studies in Bible and Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004), 18.

Current trend in the evangelical circle about their approch of the Bibilical texts

First, there has been a recognition that all the biblical books are, in different degrees, theological documents, and that one of the main aims, if not the main aim, of interpretation should be to elucidate their theology. (I. Howard Marshall, Kevin J. Vanhoozer, and Stanley E. Porter, Beyond the Bible: Moving from Scripture to Theology, Acadia Studies in Bible and Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004), 19.

Second, at the same time there has been a recognition that texts should be studied in their own right as literary entities. This has led to a concentration of attention on the texts in their final forms and to a lessened interest in how they came to be (I. Howard Marshall, Kevin J. Vanhoozer, and Stanley E. Porter, Beyond the Bible: Moving from Scripture to Theology, Acadia Studies in Bible and Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004), 19.

Third, there has also developed the discipline of canonical criticism, which insists that books be interpreted not only in their final form, but also as part of a canonical collection of Scripture, and this has led us back to something rather like the old principle of “interpreting Scripture by Scripture.” (I. Howard Marshall, Kevin J. Vanhoozer, and Stanley E. Porter, Beyond the Bible: Moving from Scripture to Theology, Acadia Studies in Bible and Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004), 19–20.

The roll of oral transmission

Lteracey douring the first centruy

Meditranena region in general

The need for oral tradtion

lack and shortage of writne documents transmission

The doctrine of the two Torah

A late developmnet in Judaism. The tradtion of the Oral Torah came to be when the Rabbis inisisted the their tradtion ot be memorized and transmisted orally. This was carried out by latter Pharisees. The Oral Tradtion was distingusihed from Scripture. They use a Yeshivah school and preaching to transmit their tradtion.