Can the Church Survive Without God's Word?

[Tutorman]

Do you really think the Bible gave birth to the Church?

Many believe heresies such as this that is why GT many other places is known as General Heresies

 

[Tone]

Oral tradition preserved the church for a long time before the Bible as we know it came to being. And for a few centuries after that illiteracy was rampant among the people who couldn't read the Bible for themselves anyway. If need be, oral tradition could preserve the church again. God's will shall prevail.

BINGO!

 

[Tone]

But within Scripture itself, "Word of God" often refers to the Messiah.

Yes, and the Comforter is referring to Scripture:

John 14:24-27
"He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings: and the word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father's which sent me. These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you. But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid."

And where are His sayings kept...where are the Words from the Father...and Who came teaching and reminding of those Words...and when they were reminded, what did the disciples do with them?

They wrote them down. The very Words of the Comforter!

*Jn. 15:26, “But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, Which proceedeth from the Father, He shall testify of Me”.

 

[Tone]

John 16:7-15, “Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away. the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send Him unto you. And when He is come, He will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment. ……..Howbeit when He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth: for He shall not speak of Himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall He speak; and He will shew you things to come. He shall glorify Me: for He shall receive of Mine, and shall shew it unto you”.

The Bible is the direct work of the Comforter, to prepare the Bride. No Bible...no Bride!

 

[Tone]

God has chosen to give us the Bible as a gift and a help

You mean, like the Helper?

 

[Tone]

That preaching of the gospel, so long as it is in agreement with Scripture and finds its primary source in Scripture, is God's word. And those who preach the gospel in such places seek to translate the Bible into the native language as quickly as possible.

Good point. Search and rescue workers aren't content with just giving their victims an oxygen tank...

 

[Tone]

What if it was supposed to be in there but we didn’t have the understanding?

We need the written word and the Living Word. If we are deprived of the actual written words, the Living Word will bring such to our remembrance, or, He will send somebody with His Message. If we do not know the Scriptures and nobody comes to proclaim the Message, how will we have faith?


Romans 10:14
"…13 for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” 14How then can they call on the One in whom they have not believed? And how can they believe in the One of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone to preach?15 And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!"

 

[Eloy Craft]

Jesus warned against the traditions of man and how they violate God's Word.

They violate the Word when they are no longer useful. They were kept in force because some one was profiting. As evil as these religious authorities were He didn't denounce their authority to institute the traditions.

Mathew 23


Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, 2 “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; 3 therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it;

 

[Eloy Craft]

Some in my other thread have begun to argue that the Bible is not strictly necessary. They said that if all the Bibles in the world were destroyed, the church would still survive. Could the church survive without God's word?

I think this question gets to the heart of the relationship between God's word and God's church. Catholics and EOs are wont to say: "Jesus didn't just leave us a Bible, he left us a church." They also want to say that the Bible and the church have an equal authority and even that the church wrote the Bible! In the Catholic and EO view, it sometimes seems to be the case that it's really the church that is most important, and the Bible is just a book that the church wrote.

But what would the church be without the word of God? Isn't it the word of God that creates and continually recreates the church? Isn't it the word of God that sustains the church? Isn't it the word of God that sanctifies the church and teaches the church?

Without the word of God, the church might still function in some traditional sense. It might go on to ordain bishops, sprinkle babies, lift up crackers to heaven and break them, etc. It might even have an unbroken line of ordination succession that can be traced back to the apostles! But without the word of God, the ministry of the church would not be able to help or save anybody. The church would become a dead institution that is utterly indistinguishable from the world.

Isn't this what happened to Israel in the time of Hosea? Though they were circumcised and had maintained certain Jewish traditions, they had become "Lo-Ammi" - not my people. Without God's word, we are not his people and he is not our God.

This is how the question goes.
If all the Christians disappeared of the face of the earth and what was left of the faith were all the bibles, would the church survive? If all the bibles disappeared and what was left of the faith were all the Christians, would the church survive?

 

[Presbyterian Continuist]

I don't accept stuff just because it's written in a book! Why should I accept what John says in his gospel and in Revelation?

John 1:14:
"The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth."

The reason why you have to accept it is because this is the way God has communicated with mankind, and there is no other way. If you don't accept what the Bible says, you have no foundation for faith, because saving faith has its foundation in the written gospel as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John set out in their New Testament writing.

 

[Gregory Thompson]

Did the Bible fall out of heaven then like manna?

Yes... it must be the hidden manna spoken of in revelation

 

[FenderTL5]

The Cambridge circa 1900 King James is the perfect Word of God for our day...

This means you voted "yes" in the poll, correct?
Otherwise you have a strange dichotomy; no "perfect word of God" for most of the two thousand years since the inspired words were written, would mean no church for most of that time as well.

 

[Mary Meg]

You mean, like the Helper?

No. I intentionally did not use that word. Because the Bible is not the Helper (or the Comforter). The Comforter is the Holy Spirit, who is God. The Bible is not God, and is not a person. The Bible is an inanimate collection of texts. That is not to say that the Bible is lifeless -- but the Bible is lifeless apart from the ministry of the Holy Spirit. The Bible "speaks," but only as the Holy Spirit speaks to us.

 

[Dave-W]

The Bible "speaks," but only as the Holy Spirit speaks to us.

Well said. Very true.

 

[FireDragon76]

Not a problem for me. The Cambridge circa 1900 King James is the perfect Word of God for our day. English is the world language and so it makes sense God would have preserved His Word in the world language of our day. I can even prove it.

Prefiero el Reina-Valera de 1808, porque Reina era Luterano, como es Dios, por supuesto.

 

[Tree of Life]

Nice to see @Mary Meg understanding how the Bible is a product of the Church, it took me 19 years, but I finally got the truth.

You've been thinking about this issue ever since you were 1?

 

[Mary Meg]

Prefiero el Reina-Valera de 1808, porque Reina era Luterano, como es Dios, por supuesto.

Preferisco il "English Standard Version" in inglese, mentre consulto il testo greco "NA28".

 

[FireDragon76]

Preferisco il "English Standard Version" in inglese, mentre consulto il testo greco "NA28".

That reminds me of an anecdote in an old koine Greek grammar book I have, about an old English woman that said "If English was good enough for St. Paul, it's good enough for me!"

 

[Tree of Life]

It's very misleading to say that the Bible is the product of the church as Peter Kreeft and others have argued. Many on this thread have picked up on this argument as well. It's misleading because...

1. The Bible was written by chosen men who were inspired by the Holy Spirit. Men like Moses, Jeremiah, Paul, Matthew, and John. The Bible was written for the church, but the Bible was not produced by church councils meeting together and voting on proposed documents, amending documents, and debating what they ought to say. This is how the church produced things like the Nicene Creed, the Westminster Confession of Faith, or the rulings of the Council of Trent. But the Bible was not produced like this. God spoke to particular men who then wrote Scripture for the church. Many of these men even experienced great resistance from the church of their day (i.e. Moses and Jeremiah). If it were up to the church, these words would have certainly been amended!

2. The Church has no right to reject, add to, or amend Scripture. If the Bible is a product of the church, then the church would be able to add to it, amend it as needed, or take away from it. If the whole church were to get together and amend the Nicene Creed then this wouldn't, in theory, be a problem because the Nicene Creed is a product of the church. But even if the whole church were to get together and vote to amend some part of Scripture, it would have no right to do so. This is because the Bible is not a product of the church, but the word of God. As such, it cannot be amended.

3. The Church did not authorize the Bible, but recognized the Bible. The books we have in the canon are not God's word because the church authorized them. They do not receive their authority from the church. Rather, they have authority because they are from God! The church had no choice but to recognize them since they are God's word.

Of course, this is another place where Catholics and EOs really differ from Protestants. Catholics and EOs tend to believe that the church is more authoritative than God's word and that without the church, God's word would not have authority. They believe that they can add to God's word through publishing infallible rulings of councils which teach things outside of Scripture. And they say things like "the church wrote the Bible" or "the church produced the Bible."

 

[Mary Meg]

That reminds me of an anecdote in an old koine Greek grammar book I have, about an old English woman that said "If English was good enough for St. Paul, it's good enough for me!"

Etiam possum legere linguam latinam!