Canon

Development of the Canon

• No book of the Bible lists the books of the Bible.
• The determination of which writings to treat as inspired, Sacred Scripture and which writings to treat as not intended by God to become part of the Bible is an extra-Biblical decision.
• "Canon of the OT and the NT."

The misuse of Scripture

• Jesus left a Body, not a book.
• No verse in the Bible says "Every teaching of the Church must be backed up by a verse in the Bible." This is an extra-Biblical decision. It is an act of hypocrisy or ignorance. The people who set this as the standard for deciding what may and may not be taught violate the standard in the very act of stating it.
• The doctrine of "sola Scriptura" is not found in the Scriptures. "Sola scriptura" is a slogan invented by Martin Luther in the 16th century.

Canon-within-a-canon

This is an error that is common among many Protestants. They select some books from the canon of the OT or the NT and neglect others.

Rejection of Seven Old Testament books

Catholics accept these books as inspired by God, even though most of them were composed in Greek and all of them are found only in Greek manuscripts:

• 1 & 2 Maccabees
• Sirach (Ecclesiasticus)
• Wisdom
• Baruch
• Tobit
• Judith

Those Protestants who follow Luther's teachings accept only the 39 books found in Hebrew manuscripts as inspired by God and set aside these 7 books as "apocryphal" or "deuterocanonical."

Attempt to Discard New Testament books

A prime example of this is Luther's rejection of the letter of James as scripture inspired by God.