Expert: J.M.J. West - 11/11/2008

Question
QUESTION: we both know the parable of the tax collector and pharisee. the tax collector merely beat his chest and admitted he was a sinner and went home justified. he was humble therefore exalted correct? would you say that the pharisee was guilty of hypocrisy and THAT was the reason that he did not go home justified. also the tax collector talked straight to God in this parable but since Christ has ascended into heaven we ask for justification "in Jesus name" now right? or do Christians talk to God as the justified tax collector? straight forward

ANSWER: Part of Justification is a realization of our need for forgiveness from God.  The Tax collector clearly recognized his need for God, the pharisee thanked God that he wasn't like the tax collector, imagining himself much superior the the man and therefor less in need of forgiveness, contrition, or love.  We must be humble, or else we delude our selves, and even set up our own selves as idols.  "How good I am, how great I am, I'm better than most (and I deserve more because of it)" is a tempting thought for all.

Authentic humility CAN and DOES recognize our gifts and talents, but views them in proportion to the "whole" of our beings, and recognizes that all we have comes from God.

The Pharisee assumed that his fasting and tithes alone could "earn" him heaven, which is just not the case (see: Pelagianism).  In doing so, he was actually turning away from the God who is Love, which is the first steps on the road to hell (i.e. eternal, self-inflicted separation from God).

Hope that helps.

Peace of Christ,

-J.M.J. West

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QUESTION: i would like to know why satan tempted Jesus with food. Why did Christ not turn the stone to bread? To show devotion to The Father? Or was it because satan gave the advice?

ANSWER: The simple answer is that, according to the scriptures, Jesus was lead by the Spirit into the desert for the sake of fasting, which we are given to understand has some real benefit for our bodies and/or souls.

Fasting puts our bodies more fully under the control of our wills - our wills being inherently damaged by the fall.  Fasting strengthens the will.

The devil tempted Christ to get him to throw off his mission, to throw off the reason he came, and to abandon his calling by doubting God and His divine providence; this is precisely how he attacked our first parents, tempting them to doubt the benevolence and providence of God.

It also serves to show that scripture can be twisted to almost any means, hence th need for an authentic interpreter (i.e. the Church, founded by Jesus on Peter and the Apostles).

Satan gave the advice precisely because he is eternally against the Father and seeks to ruin and destroy all that is good, which in his perverse sight is a pain to behold.

He also tempted Jesus with Fame ("throw yourself down before the people of Jerusalem and his angels will carry you to safety")and Power ("bow to me and I'll give you all the kingdoms of the world").

Does that help?

Pax Christi,

-J.M.J. West

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QUESTION: why isnt the "Judas" book in the bible? also how do you know that we haven't changed scripture  IT'S BEEN 2000 YRS! you would think kings in their high positions would distort it in some ways for profit and to control kingdoms right? no?

Answer
Great questions.

The canon of scripture(ie. the list of books which make up scripture) is something which is itself not found in scripture.  The canon of the bible was settled by the Church, which existed before the New Testament (NT) was written, and to whom the NT letters were written, and who compiled the books that comprise the NT.  These early churches, which were offshoots of those founded by the Apostles, and whose bishop's authority was derived from the apostles (and actually from Christ through the apostles), all had partial canons for the first 300 years of Christianity.  The main means of the transmission of the truth was via oral instruction within the Church.

Now each church had copies of some letters and a gospel or two, which they shared with others.  They used these texts in their liturgies, and read from them from instruction.  But there was no official canon, no list of books (27 in the case of the modern NT) which authoritatively set which books were - and weren't - scripture.

In that time a number of books began to be circulated.  Some were books we include today, like the letters of Paul or the Gospel of John; some of those books, like Revelation and Hebrews, were not certain.  Some were often read from, but people weren't sure of their canonical status, such as the letters of bishops like Clement and Ignatius, both from the 1st century.  And some - like the Gospel of Thomas (which concludes with "women don't deserve life unless they become men") or the Gospel of Judas - purported to be of an authentic, apostolic nature (i.e. written by an apostle or one of the first apostolic men (like Luke or Mark), but which few if any churches had record of.  St. Irenaeus, a bishop in the late 2nd century mentions the Gospel of Judas as being from the Gnostics, an early heretical sect of pseudo-Christians, who taught that the body (and all matter) was inherently evil).

To combat certain heresies, including Gnosticism and also Marcionism (which taught that the Old Testament God was not the same as the New Testament God), which began making their own canons (and rejecting books which the entire church accepted), the Church finally declared what books were to be accorded the title of Scripture in a series of councils:

1.   Council of Rome in 382
2.   Council of Hippo in 393
3.   Council of Carthage in 397
4.   In 405 Pope Innocent I reaffirmed the canon in a letter to Bishop Exuperius of Toulouse.
5.   Council of Carthage II in 419
6.   II Nicaea (787), which approved the results of the 419 Council of Carthage
7.   Florence (1442),
8.   Trent (1546),
9.   Vatican I (1870), and
10.   Vatican II (1965).

Each ratified the same NT (AND OT canons), for a total of 73 books, 46 OT and 27 NT.

Without this decision, there would be no scripture - or nothing that wasn't a patchwork of pastiche and dubious texts.  In fact, in order to have an "infallible bible", you MUST have an infallible canon.  If you had doubts that any particular book might actually be scripture, then you could not trust the scriptures as an infallible source of guidance.  And since Jesus didn't say "Hey, look out for these books and then compile them", nor did Paul write a table of contents, it was up to the Church, the Apostles who received the authority to "Bind and loose" on Earth and have what they decree ratified in heaven (Cf. Matt 16:16ff, 18:17ff).  The church made the decision, and the decision was either guided by the holy spirit (which I posit that it was, and this authority is in fact more "biblical" than the bible itself!), OR they didn't have the authority, in which case it's every man's bible for himself.  If this is the case, then quickly you arrive at the following scenario:  You don't like Paul's letters?  Throw them out.  You like the gospel of Judas?  Accept it.

Pretty soon every Christian has a different canon, his own personal canon, and none of them know if their canon is any good or not.

Now, as for those books where were thrown out, many were done so with good reason.  Again, they were known to be written by gnostic heretics who taught radically different things from those taught to the Apostles and handed down through the apostolic men.  "Instead of presenting him as the faithless betrayer of the biblical Gospels, the Gospel of Judas depicts Judas as the disciple who was closest to Jesus, the only one who truly understood the mysteries of Christ’s teachings and who received special knowledge from Christ in private. The text also reveals a much different account of Judas’ supposed “betrayal” of Christ; in it, Christ actually tells Judas to hand him over to the Jewish authorities so that he might be freed from his fleshly form."(1)  This utterly inconsistent with the otherwise utterly consistent witness of the early church fathers and what would become the canonical writings.

Some food for thought from the early church fathers:

"And thus preaching through countries and cities, they appointed the first-fruits [of their labours], having first proved them by the Spirit, to be bishops and deacons of those who should afterwards believe. Nor was this any new thing, since indeed many ages before it was written concerning bishops and deacons. For thus saith the Scripture a certain place, 'I will appoint their bishops s in righteousness, and their deacons in faith.'... Our apostles also knew, through our Lord Jesus Christ, and there would be strife on account of the office of the episcopate. For this reason, therefore, inasmuch as they had obtained a perfect fore-knowledge of this, they appointed those [ministers] already mentioned, and afterwards gave instructions, that when these should fall asleep, other approved men should succeed them in their ministry...For our sin will not be small, if we eject from the episcopate those who have blamelessly and holily fulfilled its duties." Pope Clement, Epistle to Corinthians, 42, 44 (A.D. 98).

"But if there be any (heresies) which are bold enough to plant themselves in the midst Of the apostolic age, that they may thereby seem to have been handed down by the apostles, because they existed in the time of the apostles, we can say: Let them produce the original records of their churches; let them unfold the roll of their bishops, running down in due succession from the beginning in such a manner that [that first bishop of theirs] bishop shall be able to show for his ordainer and predecessor some one of the apostles or of apostolic men,--a man, moreover, who continued steadfast with the apostles. …To this test, therefore will they be submitted for proof by those churches, who, although they derive not their founder from apostles or apostolic men (as being of much later date, for they are in fact being founded daily), yet, since they agree in the same faith, they are accounted as not less apostolic because they are akin in doctrine…Then let all the heresies, when challenged to these two tests by our apostolic church, offer their proof of how they deem themselves to be apostolic. But in truth they neither are so, nor are they able to prove themselves to be what they are not. Nor are they admitted to peaceful relations and communion by such churches as are in any way connected with apostles, inasmuch as they are in no sense themselves apostolic because of their diversity as to the mysteries of the faith." Tertullian, Prescription against the Heretics, 33 (A.D. 200).

"I must not omit an account of the conduct also of the heretics--how frivolous it is, how worldly, how merely human, without seriousness, without authority, without discipline, as suits their creed…At one time they put novices in office; at another time, men who are bound to some secular employment; at another, persons who have apostatized from us, to bind them by vainglory, since they cannot by the truth. Nowhere is promotion easier than in the camp of rebels, where the mere fact of being there is a foremost service. And so it comes to pass that today one man is their bishop, to-morrow another; to-day he is a deacon who to-morrow is a reader; to-day he is a presbyter who tomorrow is a layman. For even on laymen do they impose the functions of priesthood." Tertullian, On Prescription Against Heretics, 41 (c. A.D. 200).

"For if the lineal succession of bishops is to be taken into account, with how much more certainty and benefit to the Church do we reckon back till we reach Peter himself, to whom, as bearing in a figure the whole Church, the Lord said: 'Upon this rock will I build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it !' The successor of Peter was Linus, and his successors in unbroken continuity were these: -- Clement, Anacletus, Evaristus, Alexander, Sixtus, Telesphorus, Iginus, Anicetus, Pius, Soter, Eleutherius, Victor, Zephirinus, Calixtus, Urbanus, Pontianus, Antherus, Fabianus, Cornelius, Lucius, Stephanus, Xystus, Dionysius, Felix, Eutychianus, Gaius, Marcellinus, Marcellus, Eusebius, Miltiades, Sylvester, Marcus, Julius, Liberius, Damasus, and Siricius, whose successor is the present Bishop Anastasius. In this order of succession no Donatist bishop is found. But, reversing the natural course of things, the Donatists sent to Rome from Africa an ordained bishop, who, putting himself at the head of a few Africans in the great metropolis, gave some notoriety to the name of "mountain men," or Cutzupits, by which they were known." Augustine, To Generosus, Epistle 53:2 (A.D. 400).

* * * * *

As for the question about the distortions of scripture, I'd submit the following, which was written by Dr. Ted Sri, a colleague of mine:

"The [New Testament Gospels] are the most historically reliable texts from antiquity we have.

"We have over 5000 individual manuscripts in different languages from different regions all agreeing on about 99+% of what they say - the varying % dealing with minor word choice or order. All of them were penned within 20-150 years of each other, and the originals we have record of existing less than 50 years after the events they witness to.

"The next best attested classical manuscript we have is Homer's Iliad. We have 650 extant copies that date from the third century AD onward, nearly a millennia away from when homer would have spun his tale; they agree in about 80% of the detail from there

"The New Testament has not only more surviving manuscripts than any other work of antiquity, but they agree to such a degree that we can say that they are 99.5% pure. If the New Testament writings are not trustworthy, then neither is the Iliad, nor anything by Livy, or Cicero, or Plato, or Aristotle...and we should thus disband all classics departments at all colleges for teaching historically unreliable matters!

- (T. Sri, The Davinci Deception)

We have pretty conclusive evidence that the scriptures have not been tampered with, and the burden of proof would then fall to the one making the claim - and I've never seen this backed up with convincing evidence.

Hope that helps!

Pax Christi,

-J.M.J. West

(1) http://theaugustineproject.blogspot.com/2006/09/gospel-of-judas-myth-and-reality