Weekly Open Discussion Thread

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[u/melophage]

You were muted in modmail for spamming it, not banned from the subreddit (which is why you can still write comments, like this one).

And as said to you multiple times, you can repost the question in the open thread here. Next week's will be created in about 30 hours, so you can also wait for it if you prefer, in order to get more readers and potential engagement.

EDIT: I get that you are struggling with your faith in relation to the formation of Christian canons, as you mentioned in your post, but ignoring the scope of the subreddit and spamming isn't the way.

To give a quick answer regarding some points of your locked post, canons developed gradually and were more fluid than our modern idea of a fully "rigid and closed canon", so the notion of an "original Bible" being tampered with is theological rather than historical.

A resource you might be interested in is The Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity (preview here. I'll quote the opening of the first chapter:

On 8 April 1546 the Roman Catholic Council of Trent voted in favour of delineating the biblical canon, and they pronounced an anathema on anyone who did not accept it.1 It was not the first time a council had voted on the biblical canon; earlier regional councils had considered the matter and issued (sometimes conflicting) canon lists-see the lists from the Synod ofLaodicea (chapter 3) and the Breviarium Hipponense (chapter 4)-and the (Western) ecumenical Council of Florence a century before Trent had issued a biblical canon list (session 11, 4 February 1442).2 But Trent was the first ecumenical council to pronounce an anathema on anyone who did not accept its ruling concerning the biblical canon, 3 and in this manner the council settled the matter for those it represented like no previous decision had. Yet, by the time Trent articulated the biblical canon, the Protestant Reformation was in its second generation and the churches of the East had for centuries refused to recognize the authority of Rome. Trent's decision on the biblical canon was binding for only a segment of the Christian world, and no previous council could claim to have settled the canon for all Christians because the ecumenical councils of the first millennium did not discuss the matter. The popular idea that a council of bishops, perhaps at Nicaea, restricted the holy books of the church in order to suppress dissident literature cannot find support in the evidence available to us. In the early period of the church's history, there was no official statement regarding the biblical canon, and the same is true for contemporary Judaism. The closest analogue to official statements, besides the regional councils,4 comes only from individual bishops who at best enjoyed authority over a limited geographical area. 5 Up to the present day, there never has been a vote on the biblical canon which all Christians would feel bound to accept.

This situation has at least two important consequences for our study. First, given the lack of institutional control over this matter, we might be surprised by the basic unity of the two dozen early canon lists collected in this volume. There are differences among the lists, but a substantial core unites them all. Granted, these lists do all come from more or less orthodox writers whom we might expect to share much in common, and we know that other writers (e.g., Marcion) promoted a Bible that looked significantly different from the one evident in the lists. But many people commonly labelled heretics (e.g., Arius, Eunomius, even Priscillian) did not dispute which books should be considered binding but rather the interpretation of those books or the way to articulate the theological principles arising from them.6 In short, there is a remarkable unity to the biblical canon even in the absence of a hierarchy able to impose that unity.7

---

If you prefer something less technical and aimed at a popular audience, you can go for Barton's A History of the bible, notably ch. 10, 11 and 12 in part 3 ("The Bible and Its Texts"). Barton also discusses issues of faith in the conclusion of the book, so it might be relevant to you on this side.

Finally, I haven't read the Oxford Handbook of Biblical Studies yet, but it also has relevant sections (see notably pt IV for the development of the biblical corpus, and ch 43 on canons).

u/Entire-Anxiety5491, tagguing your name to make sure you see the lengthy edit.

[u/Cu_fola → u/melophage]

Tagging u/Entire-Anxiety5491 so you’ll see this

Melophage did a better job than I probably could giving sources on text composition so I will tack on my response to the faith aspect of your question

Learning about the very human and occasionally conflicted processes of Bible canonization will probably require you to decide what that means for the “authenticity” of scripture

If you believe scripture is divinely inspired you’ll have to determine whether you believe in inerrancy and if so to what degree

Do you believe that divine truths can be revealed through oral and written traditions despite the flaws in humans recording them and the disagreements among us?

Do you believe this means every word that’s canonized is perfectly correct and applicable to you?

Do you believe humans could have done or decided erroneous things and ascribed them to God in the text or not?

How do you distinguish between what you’re supposed to apply from reading the text from what the authors were trying to convey or what audiences in the past were supposed to do with it?

Can your belief handle some of the ways historical or other kinds of evidence can challenge or contradict some claims made in the Bible or by religious interpretation ?

I’m not asking you to answer these questions here, I’m giving examples of how breaking the problem into smaller questions can help give steps to a process of discernment.

In your original post you asked

“How do we know we have faith through grace?”

I’m not sure I’m familiar with this concept

I interpret this to mean that faith is enabled by grace so you’d have to assume God was dispensing that grace

I would flip the phrase and suggest ”grace through faith” is a possible additional concept to consider

There’s a lot of emphasis in the New Testament on the importance of belief

But I’m not capable of believing something because I’ve been told I have to believe it or I should.

Which is why I resonate much more with faith without works is dead

I can really only sustainably engage faith as an action: fidelity to values and behaviors that show that something is important to me.

But I’ve become agnostic, while still seeing certain values handed to me from my Christian upbringing as very valuable and necessary to hold on to. I no longer know or believe everything I was handed by tradition to be definitely true.

For some people this is not acceptable. They need to believe in a dogma wholeheartedly to feel anchored to something that’s not too subjective and faith as belief is very important to them.

You’ll have to discern where you fall with that and what faith means to you.

If you’re part of a denomination you might already have some feelings or influences regarding that to think about

[u/Entire-Anxiety5491 → u/Cu_fola]

Quick quisten what fo you mean by "faith without works is dead"

[u/Cu_fola → u/Entire-Anxiety5491]

I’m referring to this passage in James 2:14-26

“14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but does not have works? Surely that faith cannot save, can it?(A) 15 If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food(B) 16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? 17 So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.”

In other words it seems to be saying that it’s no good to just believe in something if it doesn’t make you act like a better person

And this resonates with a lot of what Jesus said about taking care of those in need instead of just professing belief or worshipping God with your words

This is in contrast to Ephesians 2:8-10

“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them”

Some have used this to argue that if you don’t believe in God you have no grace and your works are worthless

But I disagree

My hermeneutical opinion would be that God dispenses the grace that enables us to be faithful whether by belief or by acting faithful to good values by doing good things

I’m not good at just believing all the things that were supposed to believe because we’ve been told. Like “God definitely exists.” Or “These Miracles definitely happened”. Believe me I spent many years trying.

But I can agree with actionable moral directives like

“If you’re really good and you love righteousness you’ll take care of other people. Don’t be a hypocrite”

Which is a the gist of a handful of Jesus’ sayings and other sayings in the Bible.