Tradition and Authority in Reformed Protestantism

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canon, yet could not discover the truth of the gospel without Paul's help. Timothy did not discover truth with his Bible (OT) alone, but was rather taught by someone (see 2 Tim. 3: 14-15) what the Scriptures meant. It is he who is now to teach others the meaning of the Scriptures, and to reprove, exhort and correct those in his care by using the OT Scriptures as well as the NT revelation received orally from the Apostles. (see 2 Tim 4:2). 4 For example, see Ex. 24:7; Deut. 17:19; Deut. 31: 11; Joshua 8:35 and 1 Tim. 4: 13. 5 I'm thinking about Luther, Zwingli, Calvin and even Menno Simons. 6 See O'Hare's: The Facts About Luther, (Rockford:TAN, 1916; 1987) 7 See for example: Acts 2:37; Acts 10:33; Acts 13:42; Acts 14:1-4; Acts 15:2; Acts 17:1-4, 16-17. 8 D.R. de Lacey says: "2 Cor. 2:3-11; 7:8-13a also refers to a previous letter. It is doubtful that this is 1 Cor., for the following reasons: (i) the tone of this letter (see 2 Cor. 2:4; 7:8) is hardly the tone in which 1 Cor. Is written. (ii) this letter followed a "painful visit" (2 Cor. 2:1-3; 12:14; 13:1-3), which does not seem to be true for 1 Cor. (iii) despite the superficial similarity, 2 Cor. 2:5ff. does not seem to be referring to the same situation as 1 Cor. 5:5, since in 2 Cor. The wrong doer appears to have offended against Paul personally. So if we call our 1 Cor. 'Cor. B', there appears to have been a 'Cor. C' (i.e., the letter referred to in 2 Cor.) before our 2 Cor. (,Cor. D'). Hence there appears to have been at least four epistles of Paul to the Corinthians." D.R. de Lacey in: The New Bible Commentary, (Wheaton: Tyndale, 1991) p.232 9 F.F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans 1943; 1982) pp.21-22 lOIn fact, the Apostle Peter points out the danger inherent in people trying to understand Paul's writings apart from proper ecclesiastical guidance: "as also in all his letters, speaking in them some things which are hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction." 2 Peter 3:16 NAS 11 For example, Clement of Rome says: "Our Apostles knew through our Lord Jesus Christ that there would be strife for the office of bishop. For this reason, therefore, having received perfect foreknowledge, they appointed those who have already been mentioned, and afterward added the further provision that, if they should die, other approved men should succeed to their ministry." Clement, Letter to the Corinthians; 44;1 [80 AD.] It is to the Church then that authority is left, and not to the layman and his Bible alone. 12 The Council of Carthage (AD 417) defined the canon as including the so-called apocryphal books long before Trent did, as did Augustine in De doctrina christiana [2,8, 13]. The OT canon was not defined by the Jews until the Council of Jamnia in AD 90, long after the Church had accepted and begun using the Greek translation of the OT: the LXX. Most of the quotations of OT passages by the writers of the NT are, in fact, taken from the LXX, and not from the Hebrew, showing us that it was the LXX which was considered the accepted version of Scripture at the time of Christ and the early Church. It is possible that the Jews rejected the deuterocanonical books not only because they were written in only in Greek and not also in Hebrew, but because the Church had already adopted them as her canon of Scripture. 13 For an excellent refutation ofthe pretended church of the Reformers, see St. Francis de Sales':

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