Negative Answer to Question 5

by Matthew Bellisario

Fist of all Tradition does not produce any new content in regards to the Word of God. So there is no need to even entertain that part of your question. I don't know how you have determined that from my writings up to this point. The Church faithfully gives us the complete Word of God in the means and methods that God chose to use, which includes Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition and the Church. As far as the Council of Trent goes, it merely represented the universal teaching of the Church on the Biblical Canon up to that point, but declaring it infallibly. You bring up the Latin translation which has nothing to do with Biblical Canon, so I do not understand your attempt to besmirch it here in your argument. Trent infallibly defined the Canon and agreed with the Church, her writings and her councils up to that point. The Councils of Hippo 393, and Carthage 397 and 419 for example justified and authorized the Deuterocanonicals for use as Sacred Scripture. Even the Protestant scholar Bruce Metzger admits that the early Christians regarded the Deuterocanonicals as being Scripture.

Metzger (2001) points out in his notes from the RSV the following:

“By the end of the first century of the Christian era, more and more Jews ceased using the Septuagint because the early Christians had adopted it as their own translation.”

"During the early Christian centuries most Greek and Latin Church Fathers, such as Irenaeus, Tertulian, Clement of Alexandria, Clement of Alexandria, and Cyprian (none of whom knew any Hebrew), quoted passages from the Apocrypha as "Scripture," "divine Scripture," "inspired," and the like. In this period only an occasional Father made an effort to learn the limits of the Palestinian Jewish canon (as Melito of Sardis), or to distinguish between the Hebrew text of Daniel and the addition of the story of Susanna in the Greek version (as Africanus)."

As far as the “Reformers” being consistent in their view of how they determine Sacred Scripture, I find that statement amusing. I find it amusing because you are in opposition to every Church in existence before the “Reformation.” In fact none of them agree with your faulty position. The churches from Egypt, Syria, Greece, Rome, Armenia, and the list goes on, all disagree with you. None of them have the same Biblical Canon as you do. All of these churches can prove they existed 1500 years before yours, and they all reject your position. In fact all of the ancient churches are unanimous with the acceptance of the Deuterocanonical books, which you haphazardly reject.

Metzger, Bruce M., and May, Herbert G., New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha Expanded Edition RSV. New York: Oxford UP, 1977.