A love affair with hearsay

Jesus said to him: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind.
Matthew 23:37

My dear friends,
May I ask what it is that you love the most? I believe that you would tell me that you love God above all else. The God of Abraham, Isaac & Jacob whom has made Himself manifest through His word, with the coming of Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the Word made flesh.

But dear friend, how do we know God? You say, by reading His Word; and while this is partly true (for how can they know unless one preach?), it is not complete. For you see, you have made the historical account of Christ, which is contained within the Catholic Scriptures, to be God Himself. Ah! But how absurd, you may think! Nay, but one of your own, mine closest friend whom thou believest to be a minister, has told me that from cover-to-cover, the words contained inside of your Calvisist authorized version, are very God, because they accurately reflect the true nature of God.

Because of the false doctrine of sola scriptura, which makes the Catholic Scriptures the final authority for faith & practice, the very ink on the pages have been elevated to a status of supernatural because they contain the very nature of God.

But dear friends, do you not know that Catholic Scriptures are akin to a historical account? Yes, they are infallible, as holy men of old were inspired by the Holy Ghost and some of their writings and prophecies continue with us today. Yes, they are profitable to teach, reprove, correct and to instruct; but they themselves are not God. Besides this fact, you are not reading the Holy Scriptures; you are reading the English translation of the Holy Scriptures, which were carefully translated by men whom you consider to be heretics! Men who believed and taught Calvin’s damnable heresies; men who would have considered your little group heretical and also sentenced your leaders to death! Men who altered and changed words of Sacred Scripture to carefully fit in their damnable heresies into the Word of God! Men who removed books from the biblical canon, which was the commonly accepted canon for the previous 1,200 years!

The Bible that you so revere as God breathed, preserved and as something that accurately represents God to man, was first canonized by the Roman Catholic Church at the Council of Rome (392 AD), Council of Hippo (393 AD), Council of Carthage (397 AD) and the Council of Florence (1431–1449 AD). Different Church approved translations have been documented throughout the years, which include St. Jerome’s translation into Latin, the Syriac Peshitta of the Eastern Churches, the Gothic Bible by Bishop Ulfilas (369 AD), and numerous Old English translations from the 600’s - 1,000’s.

Besides Roman Catholic translations of the Bible or Protestant heretics (Luthern/Calvinist/Anglican/Anabaptist), there exists very few. As each of the distinct religious groups contain different theological worldviews and dogmas, it is important to understand that their doctrinal views are carefully embedded into their translation of the Holy Scriptures. This is why your minister will take the time to correct the translation to fit best with his understanding of worldview, doctrine or dogma. But if one is correcting the translation, does one think himself smarter than the translator who knew various ancient languages better than himself? Is this not defiant of scholarship? How can one judge that the translator’s choice of words was correct in this place but incorrect in another? Furthermore, how can one critique or judge the translation when one feels that the ink on the pages is God Himself?

I tell you dear friends, you worship the Bible, or rather your own personal translation & viewpoint of the Bible, instead of God. You have a love affair with a historical text. You would not even know of Christianity without the Roman Catholic Church, whom God used to settle the biblical canon and accurately preserve the Holy Scriptures until this day. You have a love affair with hearsay! For how would you have known of Christ unless He had sent His Apostles into all the world, preaching the gospel, establishing Churches, committing to them the Faith: if these bishops, priests and monks had not faithfully kept their charge, hand copied the Scriptures and preserved them for you today?

Dear friends, when Christ expounded the Scriptures to His disciples the things that were concerning Him, it was not He Himself, the written ink on the pages which was truly Him; it was the foreshadowing of Himself. Christ was truly present with them there in the flesh, and He made known Himself in the breaking of bread!

We need not love the historical account of Jesus, as if it is God-with-us. We have God-with-us, Jesus Christ, the Word made Flesh, in the breaking of bread, in the Eucharist! We can come bow before Him, adore Him, worship and partake of His Divine nature, because Jesus Christ is truly present with us; not just ink on pages. We have Jesus; not just a story.