Purgatory, a unique Catholic doctrine

[Vicomte13]

Thank you. The only modification I would make to your fine discussion is that Protestants did not remove "all of these texts from their canon" any more than they removed the Book of Mormon from their canon. You cannot remove something which never existed in your canon. To be consistent, you should have said that the Catholic Church removed from their canon the books accepted by other branches of Christianity.

The simple reality, of course, is that this is a tempest in a teapot as the vast majority of Protestants as well as Catholics are blissfully unaware of any differences. This is not to mention that there is no unique doctrines presented in the deutercanon (or the other books accepted by other Christian churches), so that whether onw believes these documents to be canonical or not has no bearing on one's beliefs.

This is not reality. You are pretending that Protestantism EXISTED during the 1500 years before it existed. It did not. Protestantism came entirely out of Catholicism. It did not exist independently of, or alongside of Catholicism. It did not exist at all. There was the Catholic Church. Then there was Catholicism and Oriental Orthodoxy. Then there was Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy and Oriental Orthodoxy. And then Protestantism came out of Roman Catholicism, as a protest against it.

Martin Luther was a priest. He came out of the Catholic Church, with its Bible. He elevated the Bible above the Church in authority. And he and the Protestant Fathers decided to remove certain books from the Catholic Bible. That's what happened.

Trying to pretend that Protestantism somehow began its existence independent of Catholicism is just silly. It's not true. It's a lie.

Trying to pretend that the Catholic Church did not have a Bible that had been agreed upon for 1000 years, containing all of those books that the Protestants removes is likewise just silly. It's not true. It's a lie.

Perhaps the Protestants were justified coming out of the Catholic Church because of the corruption of that day, or other practices. That's a legitimate topic of discussion. But if you create a false historical narrative, you deceive yourself and cannot understand what really happened.

The Protestant canon never existed in the Christian Church before Protestantism. Orthodoxy and Catholicism all have all more books in them than the Protestant canon. The Catholic and Orthodox canons of Scripture were always based on the Septuagint. The Protestants actively abridged the Christian Bible, cutting things OUT of it that had always been there, and that still ARE there in all the rest of Christianity.

Also, quite unlike the Protestant attitude about the books they cut - which they denigrate as unbiblical, uninspired, and unnecessary, indeed "apocryphal" - the Catholics and the Orthodox recognize that the additional books in the other Orthodox canons are all holy books, good for reading and teaching, indeed even inspired by God - just not falling within the criteria a particular church set for the Bible. That's all.

 

[Albion]

The Council of Trent dogmatically affirmed the same canon which had been established centuries ago. The dogmatic definition was in response to the Protestant reformers questioning the canon and removing books.

The Catholic Church did not finally approve the canon until after the Reformers questioned the canon and removed the Deutero-Canonical books.

 

[Open Heart]

We didn't. The Catholic Bible contains the books that the Protestants omitted.

Some of the Septuagint is not in our Catholic Bible: 3 Maccabees, Psalm 151, Prayer of Manasseh, Letter of Jeremiah (this is not the same as the regular book of Jeremiah). I think I remember this correctly -- someone can butt in if I got this wrong.

 

[Open Heart]

I would press for an answer since what you have been told is a lie that has been repeated on this forum over and over again.

See post 282

 

[concretecamper]

Your post 282 does not address the lie that was told.

 

[concretecamper]

Florence 1431.

Most firmly it believes, professes and preaches that the one true God, Father, Son and holy Spirit, is the creator of all things that are, visible and invisible, who, when he willed it, made from his own goodness all creatures, both spiritual and corporeal, good indeed because they are made by the supreme good, but mutable because they are made from nothing, and it asserts that there is no nature of evil because every nature, in so far as it is a nature, is good. It professes that one and the same God is the author of the old and the new Testament -- that is, the law and the prophets, and the gospel -- since the saints of both testaments spoke under the inspiration of the same Spirit. It accepts and venerates their books, whose titles are as follows.

Five books of Moses, namely Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy; Joshua, Judges, Ruth, four books of Kings, two of Paralipomenon, Esdras, Nehemiah, Tobit, Judith, Esther, Job, Psalms of David, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Baruch, Ezechiel, Daniel; the twelve minor prophets, namely Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi; two books of the Maccabees; the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John; fourteen letters of Paul, to the Romans, two to the Corinthians, to the Galatians, to the Ephesians, to the Philippians, two to the Thessalonians, to the Colossians, two to Timothy, to Titus, to Philemon, to the Hebrews; two letters of Peter, three of John, one of James, one of Jude; Acts of the Apostles; Apocalypse of John.

 

[kepha31]

The Catholic Church did not finally approve the canon until after the Reformers questioned the canon and removed the Deutero-Canonical books.

Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent
The Fourth Session
Decree Concerning the Canonical Scriptures
Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent

Prove your assertion. Affirmations of former councils going back to the Council of Rome DOES NOT MEAN FINAL APPROVAL. The canon was discussed at Trent, affirmations of what was always there does not mean it was finally approved. You make it sound like the canon was invented at Trent. Was it invented at Vatican II???
Now is your chance. Quote directly from Trent to make your case or stop making things up.

 

[Open Heart]

Fair enough, but some of it was removed. That's worth keeping in mind when the subject of Protestants removing the Apocrypha rolls around again.

Protestants had no authority to form a canon.

 

[Open Heart]

Why did the Catholic Church take part of it out of the OT after the Lutherans took out some books on their own?

I don't think one had anything to do with the other.

The NT canon had been set by the Church since the 4th century. Who do the Lutherans think they are that they can remove books from the canon?

On the other hand, although the Septuagint had been used for 1500 years (and that does count for a lot), it had never been the official canon. Trent therefore didn't actually remove anything. What Trent did was set the official canon of the OT.

 

[Open Heart]

Your post 282 does not address the lie that was told.

Oh? I understood you post to be saying it was a lie that the Catholic Bible didn't contain all the Books in the Septuagint. I gave you a list of Books in the Septuagint that are not in the Catholic Bible. Did I misunderstand your post? I need some clarification.

 

[gabbi0408]

The Catholic Church did not finally approve the canon until after the Reformers questioned the canon and removed the Deutero-Canonical books.

I wouldn't say it was a "final" approval, as that seems to say that there was still question as to what was inspired scripture and what was not.

The Catholic Church established the canon in 393 at Hippo and affirmed it in subsequent councils. The Reformers called this into question 1000+ years later, and so the Church then had to make it an official pronouncement in response.

 

[Albion]

Protestants had no authority to form a canon.

Doesn't add much to the conversation to take the "I consider my own denomination to be the only real church" approach, though, does it?

I mean, the Seventh-Day Adventists and other churches say the same thing but in reverse--if the Catholic Church defines anything, it has to be wrong.

But the biggest mistake in your statement may be that the Catholic Church had not formed the canon until AFTER Luther. There was only a tentative canon until that time.

 

[Albion]

I wouldn't say it was a "final" approval, as that seems to say that there was still question as to what was inspired scripture and what was not.

The Catholic Church established the canon in 393 at Hippo and affirmed it in subsequent councils. The Reformers called this into question 1000+ years later, and so the Church then had to make it an official pronouncement in response.

Except that she actually altered it, if slightly, in 1546 after Luther's protest. The significance of that decision is to put to rest the claim we've seen here on CF many times to the effect that the Protestants changed the canon. They actually did nothing that the RCC itself wasn't going to do later. Even if it's argued the church didn't change the canon but didn't give final approval to it until the Counter-reformation, the claim that Protestants changed something that was finalized in the fourth century is refuted.

So that means that you are left only with Open Heart's approach to the matter and simply say that the RCC has the authority to make the decision and no one else--even though it wasn't the RCC that made the tentative decision in the fourth century, but the undivided church of the first millennium that existed prior to the Great Schism.

 

[Vicomte13]

Some of the Septuagint is not in our Catholic Bible: 3 Maccabees, Psalm 151, Prayer of Manasseh, Letter of Jeremiah (this is not the same as the regular book of Jeremiah). I think I remember this correctly -- someone can butt in if I got this wrong.

I think that this is in part due to the fact that there were not really any "books" as such back in the First Century. "The Septuagint" sounds like a book, but there is no real BOOK before the Four Great Uncial Codices: Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus and Ephraim Rescriptus, from circa 350-400 AD, listed in order of relative age (Vaticanus is the oldest, from the early to mid 300s, the other three were made later in that century). These are the first four BOOKS of Scripture we have. Before that there are scrolls and fragments.

So, if we are to speak of "THE Septuagint", as though it were a single thing, these books would be the first examples of it. Before that, there were individual scrolls, but they were not bound together as a single book (a "codex"). So, before 350 AD, one could not point to any specific book and say "that is the Septuagint". There was, rather, a corpus of religious material, some in Hebrew, some in Greek, that was all collected together in religious libraries and repositories, some here, some there.

If one looks at the actual Old Testament contents of the Four Great Uncials, one has to set aside the Codex Ephraim, because most of the Old Testament pages are lost.

Vaticanus has everything that is in the Catholic Bible except for 1 and 2 Maccabbees (it also lacks 3 and 4 Maccabbees and the Prayer of Mannasseh at the end of 2 Chronicles). It doesn't contain any works that are not in Catholic Bible. It has been in the Vatican forever, probably since it was made in the 300s AD. In 331 AD the Emperor Constantine commissioned Eusebius of Caesarea, the Christian historian and bishop, to produce 50 presentation bibles, containing all of the scriptures, for distribution from Constantinople. These were the very first Bibles - as such, ever made in any language. There was no Hebrew or Greek Bible before that. There were scriptures, but at no point had they ever been sown together as an individual book.

Codex Vaticanus is very probably the only surviving example of these very first Bible, having been presented to the Bishop of Rome, where it has remained since.

It was probably this first great Bible-producing effort that generated the interest in determining exactly what was, and was not, the canon of the Bible - since now the Bible had been called into existence (by Constantine)(the irony is so rich).

In any case, this first and oldest Bible, Codex Vaticanus, is virtually identical to the current Catholic Bible, except that 1 and 2 Maccabees, and the Prayer of Manasseh are not in it.

The next oldest, Codex Sinaiticus, may also be one of those presentation Bibles, produced later in the stream of production. Or perhaps it was copied from one of them. In any case, it contains the same books as Vaticanus, except that it also has 1-4 Maccabees, and the Prayer of Manasseh, as well as 2 Esdras (3 Ezra), which is part of the Eastern Orthodox canon but not the Catholic canon (though it is considered a holy work worthy of studying).

Third in line is Codex Alexandrinus. It, likewise, contains the same canon as Vaticanus, doesn't have 1-2 Maccabees, but does have 3-4 Maccabees. It also has a series of 14 Odes that the other two does not.

So, those three, THE most ancient Bibles of all, are the same as the Catholic canon, with some variation in the Maccabees. Rather unsurprisingly, one of the few differences between the Eastern Orthodox and Catholic canon is that the Orthodox also include 3 Maccabees, and some of them include 4 Maccabees.

The other books that appear in some Orthodox canons are not in the oldest Bibles, but no doubt were important manuscripts to certain parts of the ancient Church, and so were used locally.

The key thing to realize is that the Jews themselves never compiled a book called the Septuagint. There not only was not an official canon, there was not an UNOFFICIAL canon either, of books grouped together. Scripture was individual, separate, discrete scrolls UNTIL Constantine had the first Bibles prepared collecting them all together. The word "bible" comes from "ta biblia", and is Greek for "the books" - a plural word.

It was only once Constantine ordered the preparation of A single book containing all of "the books", that what exactly was "in" and what was "out" had to be determined. What was "in" in Vaticanus, the oldest Bible, is what is still "in" the Catholic Bible, for the Old Testament. 1 and 2 Maccabees and the Prayer of Manasseh were included in the later copies, as were 3 and 4 Maccabees.

In Codex Sinaiticus, the New Testament also contains the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas, two books considered holy, ancient and good for study by the Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox churches, but not included in the canon (and not in Codex Vaticanus). The Ethiopian Orthodox include both of them in their canon of the New Testament.

So, when speaking of what the Catholics "took out" of the LXX, the truth is that the Catholic Church has exactly the same canon as was in the very first Bible in Rome - the Codex Vaticanus - except that 1 and 2 Maccabees and the Prayer of Mannaseh were also included in the later canon. The Latin Catholics, centered on Rome, didn't take anything out of the "original" LXX Bible. In fact, they added three books or parts of books to it, based on other traditions.

 

[Open Heart]

Doesn't add much to the conversation to take the "I consider my own denomination to be the only real church" approach, though, does it?

1. Apostolic Succession
2. The decision of a united church verses a small little portion.

 

[Open Heart]

I think that this is in part due to the fact that there were not really any "books" as such back in the First Century. "The Septuagint" sounds like a book, but there is no real BOOK before the Four Great Uncial Codices: Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus and Ephraim Rescriptus, from circa 350-400 AD, listed in order of relative age (Vaticanus is the oldest, from the early to mid 300s, the other three were made later in that century). These are the first four BOOKS of Scripture we have. Before that there are scrolls and fragments.

So, if we are to speak of "THE Septuagint", as though it were a single thing, these books would be the first examples of it. Before that, there were individual scrolls, but they were not bound together as a single book (a "codex"). So, before 350 AD, one could not point to any specific book and say "that is the Septuagint". There was, rather, a corpus of religious material, some in Hebrew, some in Greek, that was all collected together in religious libraries and repositories, some here, some there.

If one looks at the actual Old Testament contents of the Four Great Uncials, one has to set aside the Codex Ephraim, because most of the Old Testament pages are lost.

Vaticanus has everything that is in the Catholic Bible except for 1 and 2 Maccabbees (it also lacks 3 and 4 Maccabbees and the Prayer of Mannasseh at the end of 2 Chronicles). It doesn't contain any works that are not in Catholic Bible. It has been in the Vatican forever, probably since it was made in the 300s AD. In 331 AD the Emperor Constantine commissioned Eusebius of Caesarea, the Christian historian and bishop, to produce 50 presentation bibles, containing all of the scriptures, for distribution from Constantinople. These were the very first Bibles - as such, ever made in any language. There was no Hebrew or Greek Bible before that. There were scriptures, but at no point had they ever been sown together as an individual book.

Codex Vaticanus is very probably the only surviving example of these very first Bible, having been presented to the Bishop of Rome, where it has remained since.

It was probably this first great Bible-producing effort that generated the interest in determining exactly what was, and was not, the canon of the Bible - since now the Bible had been called into existence (by Constantine)(the irony is so rich).

In any case, this first and oldest Bible, Codex Vaticanus, is virtually identical to the current Catholic Bible, except that 1 and 2 Maccabees, and the Prayer of Manasseh are not in it.

The next oldest, Codex Sinaiticus, may also be one of those presentation Bibles, produced later in the stream of production. Or perhaps it was copied from one of them. In any case, it contains the same books as Vaticanus, except that it also has 1-4 Maccabees, and the Prayer of Manasseh, as well as 2 Esdras (3 Ezra), which is part of the Eastern Orthodox canon but not the Catholic canon (though it is considered a holy work worthy of studying).

Third in line is Codex Alexandrinus. It, likewise, contains the same canon as Vaticanus, doesn't have 1-2 Maccabees, but does have 3-4 Maccabees. It also has a series of 14 Odes that the other two does not.

So, those three, THE most ancient Bibles of all, are the same as the Catholic canon, with some variation in the Maccabees. Rather unsurprisingly, one of the few differences between the Eastern Orthodox and Catholic canon is that the Orthodox also include 3 Maccabees, and some of them include 4 Maccabees.

The other books that appear in some Orthodox canons are not in the oldest Bibles, but no doubt were important manuscripts to certain parts of the ancient Church, and so were used locally.

The key thing to realize is that the Jews themselves never compiled a book called the Septuagint. There not only was not an official canon, there was not an UNOFFICIAL canon either, of books grouped together. Scripture was individual, separate, discrete scrolls UNTIL Constantine had the first Bibles prepared collecting them all together. The word "bible" comes from "ta biblia", and is Greek for "the books" - a plural word.

It was only once Constantine ordered the preparation of A single book containing all of "the books", that what exactly was "in" and what was "out" had to be determined. What was "in" in Vaticanus, the oldest Bible, is what is still "in" the Catholic Bible, for the Old Testament. 1 and 2 Maccabees and the Prayer of Manasseh were included in the later copies, as were 3 and 4 Maccabees.

In Codex Sinaiticus, the New Testament also contains the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas, two books considered holy, ancient and good for study by the Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox churches, but not included in the canon (and not in Codex Vaticanus). The Ethiopian Orthodox include both of them in their canon of the New Testament.

So, when speaking of what the Catholics "took out" of the LXX, the truth is that the Catholic Church has exactly the same canon as was in the very first Bible in Rome - the Codex Vaticanus - except that 1 and 2 Maccabees and the Prayer of Mannaseh were also included in the later canon. The Latin Catholics, centered on Rome, didn't take anything out of the "original" LXX Bible. In fact, they added three books or parts of books to it, based on other traditions.

First, let me say it is a pleasure to be talking to someone as fluent with the various manuscripts as you are.

I am the sort of person who reads books and, rather than memorizing the details, hangs on to main ideas. I only remember details if I read them over and over, which I haven't in this particular case. So although I'm educated in this department, I only have main ideas to give back to you.

The origin of the Jewish canon is lost to time. It certainly wasn't around when the Church was first formed. We agree the Septuagint was not a Jewish canon. It was a collection of important Sacred writings. It is also important to remember that the Jewish canon means something different to Jews than what our canon means to us, in terms of inspiration.

I think you are overly confident in some of the things you are saying. You say that the first century Septuagint only contained the books now in the Catholic Bible, but I noticed you didn't supply a document to prove this. The scholars I have read disagree with you. If I'm going to err, I'd rather make the mistake of trusting a scholar than trusting some unknown person on the internet. Nothing personal.

 

[gabbi0408]

Except that she actually altered it, if slightly, in 1546 after Luther's protest. The significance of that decision is to put to rest the claim we've seen here on CF many times to the effect that the Protestants changed the canon. They actually did nothing that the RCC itself wasn't going to do later. Even if it's argued the church didn't change the canon but didn't give final approval to it until the Counter-reformation, the claim that Protestants changed something that was finalized in the fourth century is refuted.

So that means that you are left only with Open Heart's approach to the matter and simply say that the RCC has the authority to make the decision and no one else--even though it wasn't the RCC that made the tentative decision in the fourth century, but the undivided church of the first millennium that existed prior to the Great Schism.

It may be that I haven't read the entire thread and you already addressed this, but in what way did the Church alter the canon in 1546?

 

[Open Heart]

It may be that I haven't read the entire thread and you already addressed this, but in what way did the Church alter the canon in 1546?

Okay, I've been reading responses and doing some research on this over the past couple days, and this is the best answer I can come up with.

The NT had been formally canonized in the 4th century. It was set. There was no messing with that.

But the Church had never formally adopted the Septuagint as canon. It was instead a Tradition (which is nothing to be sniffed at if you understand Catholicism).

I said in an earlier post that I didn't think that the OT canonization at trent had anything to do with the Protestants adopting the Jewish canon, but I take that back.

As in the past, the Church seldom nailed things down until challenged by heresies, but when challenged, responded with dogmas drawn up in Ecumenical councils. And so at the Council of Trent, the Church reviewed the tradition of the Septuagint to see if it passed muster. The result was the Long Canon of the OT of the Catholic Bible as it is today.

One of the issues that complicates things is that there is more than one versions of the Septuagint. I did not really understand this before. The oldest manuscript we have is Vaticanus, and is dated 350 AD. It does not have all the books in the Catholic OT (missing 1 & 2 Maccabees). Other manuscripts such as Alexandrinus, 450 AD, have MORE than the books in the Catholic OT (has 3 & 4 Maccabees). What really kills is that we no longer have any copies or lists of what constituted the Septuagint in the first century, which is what we really need to have in order to understand Trent. We simply lack the historical documentation needed to sufficiently analyze the council from a historical point of view. Of course, for Catholics, that sort of analysis is unnecessary.

 

[kepha31]

It may be that I haven't read the entire thread and you already addressed this, but in what way did the Church alter the canon in 1546?

I would like to know too. There is no mention of it in the Council of Trent canons. All Trent did was reaffirm a chain of previous councils. "reaffirm" does not mean add or subtract. It means
''confirm the validity or correctness of (something previously established)."
CT table
Reaffirmations on the canon of scripture recurred down through history up to Vatican II so Trent is just one of them. Even though they were dealing with a major revolution.

 

[Vicomte13]

I think you are overly confident in some of the things you are saying. You say that the first century Septuagint only contained the books now in the Catholic Bible, but I noticed you didn't supply a document to prove this. The scholars I have read disagree with you. If I'm going to err, I'd rather make the mistake of trusting a scholar than trusting some unknown person on the internet. Nothing personal.

I did not supply a document because no document ever existed. "Canon" - what was "in" and what was "out" only MATTERED when all of the texts were assembled into one book. That required a decision - what is in and what is out. That never had to happen before Constantine commissioned the Bibles for distribution. Once it was all assembled together into one single document, what was in and what was out mattered.

There is a cloud of individual works before 331 AD, but once The Bible was commissioned as one single book, decisions had to be made. There was no single document before Constantine's Bibles that was "The Septuagint". The first BOOK that was THE Septuagint, as opposed to a bunch of texts not bound together under one cover, was Vaticanus and the other original Bibles.

So, what you have asked is impossible. There is no "document" from before 331 AD that was "The Septuagint", only a bunch of documents. There never was one.