Expert: D.S - 11/22/2010

Question
Hi,

"The Bible was an indispensable resource for the development of
Christianity." Do you agree with this statement?

How would I argue for or against this statement?

Thanks, Shanna

Answer
I agree with that statement to a point and also disagree with that it was indispensable,I will explain why.
The Devil understood that then and now as well,After Pentecost which started the new way of worship and the rejection of Judaism by God evil men came into the Church and corrupted it.

The only religious worship of Christianity was the Catholic Church who forbade the reading of the bible.Bible reading was frowned upon, if not condemned outright. In many predominantly Catholic countries, the common people viewed the Bible as a Protestant book to be avoided.

In fact the only Church that preached Christ had this in the bible:

"NOT to be read without the presence of a priest"

They also killed men and women who violated reading by burning at the stake.

So the Church dominated the bible and who could read it by other ways in that it was in Latin which many didn't know,so men began to translate in other languages and when it was discovered the were strangled,me like Tyndale who moved to Antwerp, where he could feel safe among the English merchants. There he wrote The Parable of the Wicked Mammon, The Obedience of a Christian Man, and The Practice of Prelates. Tyndale continued his translating work and was the first to use God’s name, Jehovah, in an English translation of the Hebrew Scriptures

He was then strangled before his body was publicly burned in October 1536 because he translated scripture from Latin to another language so all could read the bible.

So yes the bible was needed for Christianity but it was not allowed to be read my common people so what happed was a protest by the people.

This shattered the religious house of Christendom in Western Europe. Having been under the almost total domination of the Roman Catholic Church, it now became a house divided. Southern Europe—Italy, Spain, Austria, and parts of France—remained mostly Catholic. The rest fell into three main divisions: Lutheran in Germany and Scandinavia; Calvinist or Reformed in Switzerland, the Netherlands, Scotland, and parts of France; and Anglican in England. Scattered among these were smaller but more radical groups, first the Anabaptists and later the Mennonites, Hutterites, and Puritans, who in time took their beliefs to North America.


Through the years, these main divisions further fragmented into the hundreds of denominations of today—Presbyterian, Episcopal, Methodist, Baptist, Congregational, to name just a few but what they took was many beliefs of the Roman Catholic Church.

So even though they rejected the Church but by continuing its beliefs and doctrines these religions are no better that from where they left.

Not until the 1800 did God separate people from Christendom by having individuals form a bible study group then known as Zions Watchtower who not only rejected the Catholic Church but the Protestant religions as well,they are now known as Jehovah's Witnesses.

So the correct statement is the bible was an indispensable resource for the development of the truth and not Christendom where false teachings came from the Roman Catholic Church.