also from comment 793 here http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/06/how-john-calvin-made-me-a-catholic/#comment-61885 :
2 Timothy 3:16 does not address the point I raised.
We know from the context that the scriptures Paul has in mind are the Scriptures that Timothy has known "from infancy." The only Scriptures that Greek-speaking Timothy would have known from infancy are the Texts of the LXX. (clearly not the NT). Are you suggesting that the LXX is the sufficient and final norm for Christian faith?
Second, as a Catholic, I am perfectly comfortable with what Paul says. Namley, The Old testament (LXX) is sufficient to perfect the Man of God for all " ἔργον ἀγαθὸν."
The phrase "Good work," in the New Testament, refers to works of charity or almsgiving. (2 cor. 9, for example).
so, the question of transmitting and interpreting the Christian faith is just not in view here.
On the contrary, when Paul does address this question in the Pastorals (Titus 1; 1 Timothy 1, etc.) he entrusts it to Bishops, not to texts.
Finally, even if I thought your exegesis of this passage were correct (which I don't), the text says nothing about the content of the new testament canon. If you believe that the content of the canon is part of the deposit of faith (which most Protestant confessions do), you are still going to need an authoritative tradition to arrive at that canon
also here in comment 93 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2014/01/clark-frame-and-the-analogy-of-painting-a-magisterial-target-around-ones-interpretive-arrow/
1. All dogs are to be considered mammals.
2. Only dogs are to be considered mammals.
In 2 Timothy 3:16-17, the first word is not ‘only’, but ‘all’. ‘All scripture’ is presented as a necessary condition for being ‘thoroughly equipped’. It is not presented as a sufficient condition. So it does not follow [from 2 Tim 3:16-17] that scripture on its own functions as ‘the defining definition of all that claims to be religious authority’.
Consider:
2 Timothy 3:16-17 and the other pastoral epistles are all about the authoritative transmission of the faith through ordained officers.
2 Timothy 3:16-17 and the other pastoral epistles are all about the authoritative transmission of the faith through ordained officers.
In this larger context, we find Paul exhorting Timothy and Titus to their Episcopal duty – which includes ordaining men to pass on the deposit of faith; as well as using their office to refute false doctrine. To do this, Paul mentions a number of tools at their disposal.
• 1st – in 2 Tim. 1:6 – Paul points to Timothy’s episcopal consecration – the laying on of hands by Paul as an essential component in his episcopal ministry.
• 2nd Paul also points to the reliability of the oral tradition Timothy received.- “Continue, writes Paul, in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it.” (2 Timothy 3:14). You’ll note that the ground of assurance, here, is not the inspiration of Scripture or the witness of the Spirit – but the reliability of its human messengers.
• Third, Paul points Timothy to the usefulness of the Septuagint – the Greek Translation of the OT (which included Deuterocanonicals) for the task and hand. This is the passage in question: 2 Tim. 3:16. Paul says they are inspired and sufficent for teaching, rebuke, and training in righteousness, in order to prepare the servant of God for every ergon agathon – every good work.
• It should be obvious from context what Paul is referring to here: The Scriptures, he says in vs. 14, which Timothy has known since Childhood – with his Greek speaking, Jewish Mother, that can only refer to to the LXX.
• Next, Paul says they are sufficient with respect to the ergon agathon – every good work. Parallel passages in the New Testament are clear about what ergon agathon are – every use in new testament refers to acts of charity – like alms giving.
• So, there is just nothing in this passage that assumes or necessitates even raising the question of the canon and its authority in the way Protestants assert – and in fact, quite a lot in the context that militates against this. The Pastoral Epistles as a whole constitute one of the most glaring contradictions to the Doctrine of Sola Scriptura, and to the Protestant Canon of Scripture.
• 2nd Paul also points to the reliability of the oral tradition Timothy received.- “Continue, writes Paul, in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it.” (2 Timothy 3:14). You’ll note that the ground of assurance, here, is not the inspiration of Scripture or the witness of the Spirit – but the reliability of its human messengers.
• Third, Paul points Timothy to the usefulness of the Septuagint – the Greek Translation of the OT (which included Deuterocanonicals) for the task and hand. This is the passage in question: 2 Tim. 3:16. Paul says they are inspired and sufficent for teaching, rebuke, and training in righteousness, in order to prepare the servant of God for every ergon agathon – every good work.
• It should be obvious from context what Paul is referring to here: The Scriptures, he says in vs. 14, which Timothy has known since Childhood – with his Greek speaking, Jewish Mother, that can only refer to to the LXX.
• Next, Paul says they are sufficient with respect to the ergon agathon – every good work. Parallel passages in the New Testament are clear about what ergon agathon are – every use in new testament refers to acts of charity – like alms giving.
• So, there is just nothing in this passage that assumes or necessitates even raising the question of the canon and its authority in the way Protestants assert – and in fact, quite a lot in the context that militates against this. The Pastoral Epistles as a whole constitute one of the most glaring contradictions to the Doctrine of Sola Scriptura, and to the Protestant Canon of Scripture.
Acts 14:23 tells us that it was the apostles who appointed presbyters in each of the Churches they founded. They didn’t hold a vote. Even Paul and Barnabass received a special consecration in their apostolic work through the laying on of hands. (Acts 13:3). We know from the Old Testament that Laying on Hands was a cultic gesture – usually reserved to sacrificial victims – indicating consecration to a sacred use.
This is what Paul did to Timothy – 2 Tim. 1:6 – and which Paul associates with the charge to keep the deposit of faith entrusted (paratheke) to Timothy by the Holy Spirit. If that is not a clear case of passing on the deposit of faith through personal means by conferring a sacral office – I don’t know what is.
But there is more: in 2 Timothy 2:2 Paul tells Timothy to entrust what he’s received (parathou) to faithful men, who will be able to teach others. What is entrusted by Paul to Timothy by episcopal consecration and through the Holy Spirit is to be entrused (Paratheke; parathou) to others. We find the same dynamics in the book of Titus chapter 1.
Now, isn’t it curious that here, of all places, when Paul specifically addresses the integrity of the deposit of faith and its transmission – that he makes no mention of the Corpus of his letters? Biblical scholars assign a late date to the Pastorals – and yet Paul says nothing about Referencing his earlier letters as the touchstone of orthodoxy. Instead – he mentions episcopal consecration, sacred tradition, and the Catholic Canon of the Old Testament.
Thank you for your reply; I’m happy you took the time to consider my question seriously.
I’m going to read the content of your reply and consider the fullness of it, as a united expression of your views, at a later time.
For the moment, though, I am short on time, so I only want to address one particular concern: An anachronism you’ve (accidentally) attributed to me.
You said I was asking, “…why there is not much or any evidence of any protests from anyone concerning… 1. calling the Eucharist a sacrifice, 2. baptismal regeneration, and 3. mono-episcopate …were deviations from Scripture.”
Just to ensure we’re communicating clearly, let me point out that THAT isn’t quite what I asked.
I did NOT ask why there weren’t protests about early deviations (if that’s what they were) “from Scripture.”
I asked why there weren’t protests about early deviations (if that’s what they were) from theApostolic Teaching.
That’s not quite the same thing.
After all, the term “Scripture” in the period 33 AD (the Ascension) to 107 AD (the writings of Ignatius of Antioch) could be applied with certainty only to the pre-Messianic books (what we now call the Old Testament).
Yes, the 27 Apostolic Era (what we now call the New Testament) books had been written by the year 100, but nobody yet described them as “the New Testament.” (That term was used, if ever, for the Eucharist, which Christ had called “the new testament in My blood.”) Probably few churches had copies of all 27 of the books we now include in our New Testament, and we know that many churches had copies of other books like The Didache and The Shepherd and The Letter of Clement of Rome to the Corinthians and often read from these works in the liturgy.
So if a Christian of this era were to tell you he was going to check to see whether Doctrinal Position XYZ was a deviation “from Scripture,” he wouldn’t mean by this that he was about to examine the text of 2nd Peter or James or Jude or Hebrews or Revelation or the Epistles of Johnor Paul’s Letter to Philemon.
He might have copies of few of those particular books, or none. If he had them, he might have some uncertainty about their doctrinal authority until he was sure that Text X was really from an Apostle (not pseudoepigraphical). And he might, in spite of his respect for the Apostle Paul, have looked at you funny if you claimed that Philemon had higher doctrinal authority than The Didache, when the latter was a widely-circulated liturgical-norms and doctrinal-exhortation document read under the title of “The Teaching of the Apostles,” whereas the former was obviously a personal letter to an individual Paul happened to know!
No, if a Christian of this era were to tell you he was going to check to see whether Doctrinal Position XYZ was a deviation “from Scripture,” he would be opening up his Septuagint. Those were the “Scriptures” which the Christians in the Greek town of Berea “searched” to see “if these things were so.”
And the Bereans were certainly not searching “the Scriptures” to find out whether Christian liturgical practices were true sacraments, or what Christian behavioral norms were. They were searching “the Scriptures” to see if Jesus really fit the criteria for being the Messiah (for example, whether it was plausible that the big Messianic Suffering-Servant prophecy in Wisdom 2:12-20 was fulfilled in Jesus).
They could not be searching “the Scriptures” to find out about Christian sacramentalism (Baptisms, the Eucharist, Laying-On-Of-Hands, etc.) because such topics couldn’t possibly be explained plainly in any document written prior to the coming of the Messiah Himself.
And as for Christian behavioral norms…! If they searched the Old Testament for clues about that, they would see it plainly spelled out that circumcision was required for membership in the People of God, full stop.
But that is not the right method for learning Christian behavioral norms, which is why the Apostles’ decision in Acts 15 flatly dissolved this Old Covenant practice. The Apostles’ decision about this was not decided by “searching the Scriptures” and if it had been it would have gone the opposite way! Rather, they exerted the authority Christ had given them: “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us.”
So I most definitely was NOT asking whether the early Christians would have protested about a teaching that deviated from “what was in Scripture.” If they took THAT approach to discerning orthodoxy from heterodoxy, the very first thing they’d have protested was the decision of the Protocouncil of Jerusalem in Acts 15 regarding circumcision.
Instead, I was asking why the early Christians had not loudly protested about deviations from the Apostolic Teaching, as they had received it. For they had received it mostly by word-of-mouth, together with whichever Apostolic-Era writings they might have acquired…a category which for them would have included the gospels, but might not have included all the Pauline, Petrine, and Johannine letters, and often included The Didache or The Shepherdor, especially in Corinth, the Letter of Clement.
Don’t mistake me: Apostolic Era books (those we do and don’t count canonical today) were surely cited and read from the pulpit — much as a pastor might quote Mere Christianity or My Utmost For His Highest today. But they might not have been included in a lectionary of planned readings yet. Their first planned lectionary would have been, in all likelihood, that which the Jews were already using in their Synagogues.
I therefore do not want our discussion to import an anachronistic notion of how Christians could discern between orthodoxy and heterodoxy. They had been taught Christianity; the minority of them who could read had surely NOT “read their way into it.”
Likewise in 2 Timothy 3, when Paul describes the Septuagint as being “god-breathed,” he is not telling Timothy that the Old Testament alone will allow Timothy to discern between Christian orthodoxy and heterodoxy. That level of information would require Timothy to have Apostolic Era knowledge, not merely Old Testament knowledge.
Fortunately the Apostolic Faith was already taught to Timothy by Paul, so Paul tells him to “continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it…,” and incidentally comments that Timothy’s knowledge of the Old Testament “from infancy” will also be very useful for instruction, rebuke, et cetera. Coupling this OT wisdom together with Timothy’s existing knowledge of the Apostolic Tradition he received from Paul will sufficiently make Timothy “equipped for every good work.”
But at the time Paul wrote that, of course, the 27 books of our New Testament were still mostly unwritten, and wouldn’t be officially canonized for a minimum of another 300 years.
So…
IF you’d told Timothy that “baptism saves you” or that Matthias was the successor to the episcopate of Judas, or that Jesus’ flesh and blood is truly present on the Christian altars so that the Christian who attends the liturgy is experiencing a sort of time-warp, standing at the foot of the cross, literally in the physical presence of the body and blood of Jesus atoning for humanity in His once-for-all sacrifice…
…IF you’d told Timothy all that, he would not have said, “Gee, let me go thumb through my copy of the Torah, or the Neviim, or the Ketuvim, to see if that’s right.”
No, Timothy would have compared what you were saying to the Apostolic Tradition which Paul had taught to him “whether by word-of-mouth or letter.” (Mostly word-of-mouth.)
And if what you said wasn’t compatible with what Timothy knew of Christianity, Timothy would not have said, “Hey, that’s not in the Scriptures!” (If he had, you could quite reasonably answer him, “Who’s talking about the Tanakh? I’m talking about what we Followers of the Way believe, which the Tanakh vaguely prefigures, but certainly doesn’t explain in detail.”)
No, if you said something was Christian orthodoxy and Timothy disagreed, he would have said something like, “I learned how to follow The Way from the Apostle Paul, who learned it from Jesus Christ, who is the Messiah. From whom are you getting these ideas, which are news to me?”
Of course, I think that “baptism now saves you” and the sacrificial Eucharist and Apostolic Succession ARE orthodox, and ARE among the things Paul taught Timothy. So, I think if you described these beliefs to Timothy, Timothy would have said, “Oh, sure, I know all that…you’ve been listening to my friend Paul, haven’t you?”
But whatever he used for discerning heterodoxy from orthodoxy, it wasn’t a book collection that was as-yet half-written and was three centuries from being standardized.
also here from comment 10
Exegeting 2 tim. 3 is a lengthy job for another post. I note, however, that the Scriptures in question are those Timothy knew from Childhood – i.e., the LXX. Do you believe these are sufficient? Further, Paul never says that they are a sufficient rule of faith. He says they are sufficient for training in righteousness, so that the man of God might be ready for “pan ergon agathon” which, throughout the NT, refers to things like acts of charity, giving alms, etc. Not explicating Christian doctrine. That’s a task he assigns to authoritative individuals (Timothy), exhorting them to hold to what they learned from many witnesses (i.e, oral tradition.)
also here from comment 10
Exegeting 2 tim. 3 is a lengthy job for another post. I note, however, that the Scriptures in question are those Timothy knew from Childhood – i.e., the LXX. Do you believe these are sufficient? Further, Paul never says that they are a sufficient rule of faith. He says they are sufficient for training in righteousness, so that the man of God might be ready for “pan ergon agathon” which, throughout the NT, refers to things like acts of charity, giving alms, etc. Not explicating Christian doctrine. That’s a task he assigns to authoritative individuals (Timothy), exhorting them to hold to what they learned from many witnesses (i.e, oral tradition.)
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