Francis J. Beckwith says:
You have this great gift, the Bible, because of scribes–all of whom resided in Catholic monastaries for nearly a millenium–who carefully, cautiously and devoutly copied the manuscripts of Scripture. These copies were preserved and protected for generations. The Church’s first complete Bible, the Latin Vulgate, was translated by St. Jerome, a Catholic priest.
i) Why does Beckwith imagine that’s inconsistent with Protestant theology? Suppose, for the sake of argument, that Protestantism is true. The true God is the God of Protestant theism.
Is there some reason to think the Protestant God wouldn’t use medieval monks to copy the Bible?
ii) Medieval monks weren’t transcribing the Hebrew OT or the Greek NT. They didn’t know Greek or Hebrew. They could only transcribe the Vulgate. That’s better than nothing, but that’s not what Protestants rely on.
iii) Of course, Jerome espoused the Jewish canon, so that’s a double-edged sword.
iv) You can’t retroactively validate modern Catholicism by appealing to a 5C church father. Jerome knew nothing of the Medieval papacy, or the Renaissance papacy, or Trent, or Vatican I, or Vatican II, and so on and so forth.
v) The Vulgate also canonizes some passages (e.g. the Pericope Adulterae; the Long Ending of Mark) which even modern Catholic Bible scholars regard as inauthentic.
vi) Apropos (v), has the Magisterium instructed the faithful on which Bible MSS we should use when translating the Bible? What’s the authoritative text of Scripture? What edition of the Greek and Hebrew Bible does the Vatican currently endorse? Does the Roman curia have a magisterial office devoted to that task?
"(H)as the Magisterium instructed the faithful on which Bible MSS we should use when translating the Bible? What’s the authoritative text of Scripture? What edition of the Greek and Hebrew Bible does the Vatican currently endorse? Does the Roman curia have a magisterial office devoted to that task?"
ReplyDeleteCatholic apologists claim that the "Church" has given us the Bible, but in what sense does this hold true? Did Jerome produce the Vulgate or did "the Church"?
Once again we encounter the elastic concept of the "Church" .
To be fair, Beckwith is responding to someone who is going against the Catholic Church as if nothing good came from them. I think Beckwith is seeking to discount that notion. I've been watching the debate with Pastor Tim for awhile and this is just a small small point in it. He's not trying to convince him of Catholicism.
ReplyDeleteThanks Nick. I know that pulling one quote won't necessarily represent an argument or position completely. However, Catholics employ quite a bit of license when attributing teachings to "The Church".
ReplyDelete