| What You Should Know about ULTIMATE REALITY |
| Bible AND Tradition? |
| CAN THE HOLY BIBLE STAND ALL BY ITSELF? |
| There would not even be a complete Bible without the Catholic Church. Members of the Church wrote the New Testament. But its parts were scattered in many places. The books needed to be collected. Members of the Church did this. But a collector needs the ability to know the genuine article when he or she sees it. This discernment came from the Holy Spirit working through the Church. Every inspired book was God's Word the moment it was written, but it was hard to tell exactly which books were the inspired ones. It took the Catholic Church several centuries to cause all Christians everywhere to agree on each and every book that makes up the New Testament. Sometimes Protestants will say that Second Timothy 3:16-17 teaches that all a godly person needs to be fully prepared for God's service is the Bible. A closer look at the passage reveals that St. Paul is teaching, "We need all of Scripture to be complete," not "All we need to be complete is Scripture." There is a big difference. A mother tells Junior that he needs to eat all of his vegetables to grow up big and strong. Junior would make a terrible mistake if he understood his mother to be telling him that all he needs to grow up big and strong is to eat his vegetables. More is needed. Every Christian group uses its tradition to know which verses of the Bible are the easy verses and which ones are the hard verses. It is like a plastic overlay each group puts over the text of the Bible. This determines from which direction the reader's mind works to harmonize the Bible. Since this cannot be avoided, and every group does this serious task, it stands to reason that God has given to His church the right Tradition needed in order to succeed. So all tradition is not bad. Some of it is essential. The Apostles taught that there are good traditions as well as bad ones. We are told to hold fast to the good ones, that is, the apostolic ones (Second Thessalonians 2:15). |
| What will you do with Jesus? |
| Neutral you cannot be. |
| Some day your heart will be asking, |
| "What will He do with me?" |
| --A. B. Simpson |
| Turn away from sin, and be faithful to the gospel. |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
8/20/08
