Sorry for butting in, but here goes...
Marcia said:
But if we say the church has authority over scripture, then what does that mean? Scripture is the authority of God's word; how can the church have authority over that?
That the Church has authority is evident from Scripture--from the words of Christ and the Apostles themselves...
Christ: "
He who hears you (the Seventy) hears Me, he who rejects you rejects you rejects Me, and he who reject Me rejects Him who sent Me." (Luke 10:16)
(--pretty self-explanatory...seems like Christ is giving those He sends out great authority.)
Christ again: "Assuredly I say to
you (the Apostles) that
whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and
whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." (Matt 18:18)
(--"binding and loosing"...that sounds pretty authoritative, particularly if whatever the apostles bind or loose on earth will be bound or loosed in heaven.)
Paul: "And He put all things under His feet, and
gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which is
His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all." (Eph: 1:22-23)
(--so Paul calls the Church,
Christ's body and the "
fullness of Him who fills all in all" (ie not a mere 'human institution'!) and that God gave Christ to be
head over all things to the Church. (Looks pretty authoritative to me)
Paul again: "I write so that you may know how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the
church of the living God, the
pillar and ground of the truth." (1 Tim 3:15)
(--the church is the pillar and ground of truth...sounds like it is pretty important, and not just some merely 'human institution'.)
The idea that the church has authority over the word puts you into the thinking like the RC Church who decides the interpretation
I'm not sure anyone is claiming "the church has authority
over the word". I certainly don't agree that it's the RCC which decides the interpretation of the Scripture apart from agreeing with the consensus of all historic apostolic churches across time and space--"
Quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est." It's also a fact that the Church by consensus arrived at the fixed limits of the NT canon from the latter half of the 4th century through the beginning, starting with the first 27-book list that matches our own produced by Bishop Athanasius in AD 367, proceeding to the pronouncement of Bishop ('pope') Damasus of Rome in 382 and continuing through the councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage(397 and 419). Like it or not we have inherited these decisions of the Church regarding the canon and most would admit that the Spirit was leading the Church in this process. (If not, that leads to some interesting epistemological problems.) However, claiming the Spirit guiding the Church in recognizing the canon (and fixing the limits), yet asserting that same Spirit-led* Church is
not authoritative, is nonsensical.
(*Unless you want to try to assert that the Spirit of Truth [John 16:13] vanished from the Church after the last apostle died..except for one special exception in the case of the canon--of course, that would be 'special pleading'))
God reveals Himself through his word;
Ultimately God reveals Himself through His Incarnate Word--Jesus Christ. Jesus proclaimed that the OT Scripture testifed to
Him (John 5:39) and He taught the correct interpretation of these Scriptures about Himself to His followers (Luke 24:27,45). He then sent out His disciples
with authority (see again Luke 10:16, Matt 18:18 and also John 20:22-23) to proclaim His gospel and establish His Church (built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets-Eph 2:20). They proclaimed the kerygma and some of them wrote Scripture--in either case the Holy Spirit was guiding them into all truth (John 16:13).
One ultimately, then, cannot separate the authority of Scriptures (God's word) from that of the Church (His body; the fullness of Him who fills all in all; the ground and pillar of truth) because:
(1) they originate from the same Divine authoritative source--Jesus Christ
(2) the OT Scriptures were authoritatively explained (interpreted) by Christ and then proclaimed by the apostles as being fulfilled by Christ
(3) the early churches, before any NT was written, was based on this apostolic proclamation/interpretation
(4) the Apostles (some at least), the founders of the Church, wrote the Scriptures to the churches
(5) the churches recognized the apostolic message contained therein and were thus able to rule out those spurious writings which, though claiming apostolic authorship, were in fact false.
(6)the Church defended the proper apostolic interpretation of the Scriptures against the distortion of the heretics
(7) the Church eventually arrived that the limits of the canon and recognized that all the material doctrine that was needed for salvation was contained therein.
Christians recognized the word because it was authenticated by apostolic authority and because it was what the church had believed since its inception. It was not a guessing game. It was not as if 300 years later the church had no idea what the scriptures were.
Althought the core of the NT canon was fairly well established by the end of the first century (the four gospels, Paul's writings, and perhaps
Acts,
1 John and
1 Peter), it did indeed take about 300 more years before the Church reached a near-universal* agreement on the status of the following books:
Hebrews, James, Jude, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Revelation to John. These are facts of history.
(*I say near-univeral, since the Ethiopian Church had included a few more, and the 'Church of the East' a few less)
This is how New Agers present it: the church hierarchy got together and decided what should be in the Bible and what shouldn't. This is not what happened.
We Christians need to make sure we get our historical facts straight particularly when talking to non-believers. While "the church hierarcy getting together and deciding what should be in the Bible and what shouldn't" is of course a gross oversimplification and thus incorrect (since the
core/majority of the NT canon was recognized by the end of the first century or early second), the
final limits (to finally and authoritatively include the seven books listed above) were in fact settled by various pronouncements of bishops (ie Athanasius and Damasus) and councils (Hippo and Carthage) in the late 4th century.
Well, how do we decide if the church has authority and over what? We use the Bible, right? So where does that leave your idea? How can we say the church has authority over the Bible without using the Bible to say the church has authority?
Yet the Bible itself can be consulted as a historical document as to what Christ and the Apostles said and did, even without considering it the closed 27 book NT canon (fixed by the Church) which we have today. As mentioned above, Christ and Paul did state that Scriptures and the Church were both authoritative. One can trace these thoughts through history and see that the Church and Scriptures were never meant to be separated or pitted against each other.