Talking to my evangelical friends about the biblical canon – Part 2

Chapter 12 of the book Talking with My Evangelical Friends by José Miguel Arráiz

Michael:  Hi Joseph, I would like to continue our conversation about the canon since there were some points we haven’t analyzed and I would like to hear your opinion.

Joseph: Go ahead.

Michael:  I’ve found out that another reason for the Evangelic Church to reject the books you call Deuterocanonical  that are not included in their bibles is because these books don’t claim to be inspired by God. You won’t find phrases like “Thus saith the Lord”, “He came to me from the Lord”, “The Lord spoke to…” but on the contrary, claim their human inspiration just as it appears in the book of the Maccabees: “I also will here make an end of my narration.  Which if I have done well, and as it becometh the history, it is what I desired: but if not so perfectly, it must be pardoned me” (2 Macc 15, 37-38). How could the divine Word be a book that recognizes the possibility of being imperfect and mediocre?

Joseph: You must not forget that even if the Bible God is the lead author, the secondary author is human, and even though he writes under divine inspiration, he is not always or necessarily aware that he does.

There are other several examples where we can observe this in books accepted by evangelical churches. There’s the example of Luke’s gospel,  that recognizes that he is writing not under God’s command but to share the events that happened during Jesus’ time to Theophilus. What he writes is not assumed as the Word of God but the simple result of his investigation consulting with eyewitnesses of those events: “Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a narration of the things that have been accomplished among us, according as they have delivered them unto us, who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word:  It seemed good to me also, having diligently attained to all things from the beginning, to write to thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou mayest know the verity of those words in which thou hast been instructed.” (Luke 1, 1-4).

Another example can be seen in the Ecclesiastes that are directly recognized to be the Word of a man, a son of David: “The words of Ecclesiastes, the son of David, king of Jerusalem. The words of Ecclesiastes, the son of David, king of Jerusalem.” (Ecclesiastes 1, 1), and later on, it recognizes not having the knowledge of things known by God: “Who knoweth if the spirit of the children of Adam ascend upward and if the spirit of the beasts descend downward?  And I have found that nothing is better than for a man to rejoice in his work, and that this is his portion. For who shall bring him to know the things that shall be after him?” (Eccl 3, 21-22). I invite you to perform an exercise: go through every book in the Bible and count how many don’t claim to be the Word of God. You’ll be surprised.

On the other hand, a book that strongly claims to be the Word of God doesn’t necessarily mean it is the Word of God. The Quran and the book of the Mormon claim to be the Word of God and you don’t accept them as such.

Michael: That’s true, we don’t accept them.

Joseph: If you accept books as part of your bibles that don’t claim to be the Word of God, and you don’t necessarily accept any book claiming the same, then it is illogical to reject the deuterocanonical for this reason. On the other side, we reason in a different way: we don’t accept the Bible as divine inspiration just because it explicitly says so. We do because we believe that Christ, true man and true God, founded a Church and that Church gives testimony that God inspires those books.

Michael: But if the Church gets corrupted, which warranty do you have that the discernment is correct?

Joseph: What happens is that for us it is dogma that the Church is unfailing, a topic for another moment, and that means that even being formed by human beings (weak and sinners), it will always be “the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim 3,15) and this includes the impossibility of failing in the supernatural end by which it was founded by our lord Jesus: to make the work of salvation always present.

Here lies the contradiction at the core of Protestantism. Most people believe that the Church was corrupted due to the edict of Milan in 313 AD and if this is true, you and us have a New Testament canon defined by a corrupt Church considering that the definition of canon occurred belatedly as we mentioned before.

Michael: I can accept that the Bible contains books that don’t claim to be the Word of God, but that is one thing and another is to accept books that teach mistakes and even contradict the rest.

There you have the book of Ecclesiastes, which affirms God hateths the sinners, besides He asks to help the humble and not the ungodly: “Do good to the humble, and give not to the ungodly: hold back thy bread, and give it not to him, lest thereby he overmaster thee.  For thou shalt receive twice as much evil for all the good thou shalt have done to him: for the Highest also hateth sinners, and will repay vengeance to the ungodly.” (Sir 12, 6-7). Haven’t you said on some occasion that God hates sin but loves the sinner? In the New Testament, we find also that God commands us to help whomever asks for our help (Matt 5,42).

Joseph: Man, the secondary author of the Bible, often left in it traces of the human part to be interpreted in context, just as there are other texts that must be understood in a spiritual sense. Christ came precisely to clarify and give fullness to Revelation. Behind these texts we find the Christian duty to repulse the enemies of the soul, not the people, “our wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places.” (Eph 6,12)

If we don’t understand this in this specific way, we would need to exclude not only this text that you mention, but others included in the protestant Bible: “Let their table become as a snare before them, and a recompense, and a stumbling-block.  Let their eyes be darkened that they see not; and their back bend thou down always.  Pour out thy indignation upon them: and let thy wrathful anger take hold of them.  Let their habitation be made desolate: and let there be none to dwell in their tabernacles.  Because they have persecuted him whom thou hast smitten; and they have added to the grief of my wounds.  Add thou iniquity upon their iniquity: and let them not come into thy justice.  Let them be blotted out of the book of the living; and with the just let them not be written.” (Ps 69,23-28). And like this, there are many similar texts.

Michael: But even in some deuterocanonical books it is approved to lie or suicide and we both agree those are sins. Should we also interpret them in a spiritual sense? For example, observe that Judith asks God for words to deceive: “Let him be caught in the net of his own eyes in my regard, and do thou strike him by the graces of the words of my lips.  Give me constancy in my mind, that I may despise him: and fortitude that I may overthrow him.” (Jdt 9,13).

And the second book of Maccabees justifies suicide: “Now as the multitude sought to rush into his house, and to break open the door, and to set fire to it, when he was ready to be taken, he struck himself with his sword:  Choosing to die nobly rather than to fall into the hands of the wicked, and to suffer abuses unbecoming his noble birth.” (2 Macc 14,41-42).

Joseph: Analyzing in detail the morality of the acts that you describe could distract us from the topic at hand. In Judith’s case, she prayed to save the town from imminent annihilation, and she succeeded. It is not so different than what Rajab the prostitute did when she lied to the King in order to save Jewish spies that were exploring the promised land (Josh 2,1-6), and even James the apostle praises and affirms that she was justified by her actions (Jas 2,25). The book of Exodus praises the Egyptian midwives that lied to the Pharaoh in order to save the Jewish newborns (Exod 1, 15-21).

Razias’ suicide happens when he was going to be imprisoned, tortured and murdered. It is no different than Samson’s situation, who held as a prisoner, prays to God for help, for the strength to shake the pillars of the place he was in, causing his death along with the philistines. The striking thing is that God comes to his aid and helps him to accomplish this: “But he called upon the Lord, saying: O Lord God remember me, and restore to me now my former strength, O my God, that I may revenge myself on my enemies, and for the loss of my two eyes I may take one revenge.  And laying hold on both the pillars on which the house rested, and holding the one with his right hand and the other with his left, he said: LET ME DIE WITH THE PHILISTINES! And when he had strongly shook the pillars, the house fell upon all the princes, and the rest of the multitude, that was there: and he killed many more at his death, than he had killed before in his life.” (Judg 16,28-30).

Of course, we can argue if these actions were objectively right or wrong, but the fact is that if you reject some books for narrating these events, you also would need to reject the other ones within your bibles.

Michael: Yes, there’s some food for thought. Now, I’ve also investigated about another objection that I considered important. In the book of Tobit, one of the books you call deuterocanonical, there are some witchcraft practices that are supported: “And after they had supped, they brought in the young man to her. And Tobias remembering the angel’s word took out of his bag part of the liver and laid it upon burning coals. Then the angel Raphael took the devil, and bound him in the desert of upper Egypt.” (Tob 8,1-3). How come the smoked smell of the fish could drive away a demon? Doesn’t it look more like a pagan practice?

Joseph: It’s worth the time it takes to read the whole book, which is not too long and is striking by its beauty. If you do so, you’ll see that more than assume that the demon was driven away due to the smell of the fish, it points out the specific obedience of the angel’s instructions, and the first thing Tobit did as he entered the matrimonial bed, was to exercise as the angel advised. I doubt that the smell of the fish should be interpreted in a literal way, like if the demon ran away from bad smell. It should be considered in its symbolic and spiritual sense: good defeats evil. With this victory from angel Raphael over Asmodeus, a very important part of God’s plan on Sarah is fulfilled: her healing is trusted by God to an angel. And the lesson, more than the promotion of witchcraft, is to teach that for those who love God, the obedience to the Lord and family prayer drive away all evil (Tob 6,18; 8,5). All this unifies the story where the figure of a fish is the instrument selected by God to heal and break free.

God, whenever and however he decides, makes minimal things serve as instruments for His miracles. Just like our lord Jesus healed a blind man with just a little bit of mud and saliva (John 9,6), the water of baptism (1 Pet 3,21) is the visible element that God has chosen to regenerate ourselves through the Holy Ghost; He worked miracles through Paul’s aprons and handkerchiefs (Acts 19,12), and for Naaman the Syrian to be healed, he was required to bath in the waters of Jordan river (2 Kgs 5,9); just like that, God can use a fish or any other visible object.

Michael: I found what you say quite interesting. I would need to think about it.

Joseph: The important thing is to be clear that it is not any person who decides which book should be part of the Bible according to its personal conceptions1. If that should be the case, with all the different interpretations of the Bible, anyone of us would have a different Bible according to our personal taste and own interpretations. Even Luther acknowledged that he received the Scriptures from the Catholic Church but he ended up rejecting books that were previously accepted in all the great councils by all the preceding Christians that existed prior to him, like if his opinion was more valuable than theirs. I have always found it curious that the protestant Bible ended up having 66 books and ours 73.

Michael: Why do you find that to be curious?

Joseph: Don’t take it too seriously since it can be just a coincidence, but in the Bible, numbers tend to have symbolic meaning. Number 7, for instance, represents perfection, number 6, on the other hand, represents imperfection (as a matter of fact, the number of the beast is 666).

Michael: Yes, but I don’t see where you are going with that.

Joseph: Just that the protestant Bible has 66 books. SIX – SIX, remember we have just said that number 6 represents imperfection. If we add the 7 deuterocanincal (SEVEN – number of perfection) the result is 73, the books contained in the Catholic Bible. Since the protestant Bible doesn’t have them, it remains as an incomplete and imperfect Bible, a Bible of SIX – SIX books.

Footnotes

  1. It is common that within Protestantism, other similar reasons to reject the deuterocanonicals are used since they directly collide against their theology. For example, they reject Tobit for teaching that the forgiveness of sins can be reached through alms “For alms delivereth from death, and the same is that which purgeth away sins, and maketh to find mercy and life everlasting.” (Tob 12,9), even when the epistle of Peter states exactly the same: “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4,8). The rejection of the books of the Maccabees (analyzed in the previous conversation) is another example due to its direct support of the doctrine of purgatory.
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