You mean in my signature? Well, I hasten to add that I didn't invent this acronym. And if you think it is bottom feed, then why don't you try refuting it in the normal manner? Calling it bottom feed doesn't help your case.
I am happy to see Calvinism rates so highly in your mind you need to have it in your sig. I definitely don't have another's systematic theology in mine.
Let me answer that for you:
Well, okay, answer for him, but do you mind interruption so I can correct your mistakes along the way for him and others reading along? Thanks.
You know it because you were brought up to believe that the Bible comprised 66 books. If your parents were Christians, you believed the Bible was from God because they told you and you believed them.
Well, no, I started Catholic, so there were a few more books involved.
If you became a believer as an adult, you believed it because other Christians told you.
And proved it fairly soundly, but that is a bible course I took. These books have a lot of internal authentication. Christ read the scriptures and indeed, had them all memorized. He called them God's Word and used them as infallible.
You believe it because you went to the shops and when you asked for a Bible, that was what you got. Or because someone gave you one for a present and when you opened it, that was what was in it. If the Apocrypha were in it, you wouldn't have known any different. If Thomas A Kempis' The Imitation of Christ was in it, you wouldn't have known any different. If C.S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters was in it, or the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, you wouldn't have known any different.
Or the Koran. Answer this: Why 'not' the Koran DR? Why 'not' the Screwtape letters. Your simplistic objection seems simplistic. The class actually did very well at explaining our 66 books. First of all, was Jesus and the Apostles' use of them as well as their preservation. They were always 39 books. The New Testament ones are self-authenticating as well, from both internal evidence, as well as evidence from one to the other. Peter, for instance, tells us "All" of Paul's letters are scripture.
You accept it for one reason only: because you tacitly accept the authority of the church.
:nono: Rather the logical premise that they are 1) self-authenticating as exampled as well as 2) Spiritually authenticating.
It was the church who created the Bible. Make no mistake about this. This is in practice what you believe.
:nono: It is true that they observed what was already authenticating, thus they merely preserved what God inspired.
You did not receive a personal revelation from God that the Bible is made up of 66 books.
Personal, no, self-authenticating? Yes.
And anyone who believes that the Bible (the 66 books) is infallible automatically believes that the church who put it together is also infallible.
Again, preserving verses authoring. They did not author your 66 books.
Because you cannot have one without the other. This is both a logical and a historical necessity.
:nono: Not even in the slightest, any kind of necessity. Did you get to that conclusion by logic? Yes, but when you make a mistake, the mistake isn't logic but you did use logic to make the mistake. Follow? If not, again, this is for posterity to the thread, not to you in particular. You are just wrong, but I don't see a lot of reason to belabor disagreement, but simply to strengthen another's resolve and faith in scriptures. In some ways, you are as based on tradition as a Catholic, which makes some sense here.
Summary: The 66 books are self-authenticating and cross-books authenticating. They are also Spiritually authenticating, in that the same Spirit who breathed them, also indwells the believer and brings the two together.
Above is a link which sums up
a book by J.I. Packer and others which most scholars are familiar with and worth a bit of reading for one to familiarize himself/herself with the 66 book canon and why we have it. It is well beyond DR's cursory glance here. -Lon
