Was there really no Bible until the year AD381?

I'm writing on an urgent matter that I think needs to be addressed within Catholic apologetics, namely the widespread Catholic claim that there was no Bible until Pope Damasus gave us the canon of Scripture in AD381. At best, this is a half truth, and at worst this is an implicit heresy and undermines Christianity. While it might score points against Protestants during a Sola Scriptura discussion, it's a bad argument that does far more harm than good. 

The problem with the "no Bible until 381" claim is that those who make the claim typically have in their mind that in the early Church - sometime after the Apostles died (~AD80) and up to 300 years later (~AD380) - there was mass confusion as to what books were Scripture and what weren't, such that the Pope had to call a Council to settle the matter by sifting through a massive pile of books, some which were inspired and some which were uninspired, and the "result" was the canon of Scripture. This mindset suggests that the Bible wasn't something passed onto us by Tradition, but rather something that was basically invented. The Pope most certainly did not walk into a library and start reading random books and try to "detect" if this or that book should be in the Bible.  In fact, this false 'personally feel out if this book is inspired' method is closer to the Protestant and Mormon approach to the canon of Scripture.

Why Head Coverings blind Protestants.

I think I've formulated a new apologetics argument that should prove fun and (hopefully) fruitful when talking with Protestants. Basically, the way Protestants view the Sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist is similar to how Paul describes the reason for Head Coverings in 1 Corinthians 11. The result of this line of thinking would not only force Protestants to make Baptism indistinguishable from Eucharist, but also to 'raise' Head Coverings up to the level of a new Sacrament in itself. Let's see where this goes. 

As (Not So) Often As You Do This - another round of the crushing Protestant liturgical dilemma

Though I haven't had much time to blog recently, I wanted to show people a beautiful real-life example of the crushing effectiveness of the Ultimate Catholic Apologetics Argument (UCAA) against Protestants (which I posted about previously). 

A "Reformed Baptist" pastor named Ken at the Protestant apologetics site Beggars All had a post focused on criticizing Catholics for following "traditions of men" rather than the Bible, which turned out to be highly ironic shortly after I brought up the UCAA in the combox. There's no need to read the post or most of the comments, but if you're interested just see the last ten comments or so for how effortlessly the UCAA can take down the most committed "Bible Christian" (see THIS link to take you straight to the last few comments). 

The key post is when I responded to Ken saying, 

[Pastor Ken said]: None of what you say really carries any weight with me, since you are right in the sense that that an order of worship is not laid out word for word, but the general idea is for us to worship God by Scripture, prayer, singing, teaching, etc. and we can arrange the order however we want to and that is not a big deal to me.

[Nick's response]: The main problem I have here is that you haven't actually given any Scriptural verses that say what the "general idea" is for Christian Liturgy. The closest thing you've listed is the Lord's Supper, which you say you only do once a month. I don't even think you've given a verse that says singing is supposed to be done during liturgy.

As for your admission that you only celebrated the Lord's Supper once a month, this is astonishing because either it is part of liturgy or it isn't. If it is part of liturgy, you have no right to only do it 25% of the time. This suggests a person can celebrate the Lord's Supper as rarely as they feel like it, and by extension they can leave out Scripture, prayer, etc, as often as they feel like it. All this reduces down to a liturgical relativism, which really isn't liturgy at all, but more and more a man-made event according to personal taste.

As you can see, Ken was pretty trapped here, because while the Bible does indicate the Eucharist is the essential part of the liturgy, and thus is done "often" (1 Cor 11:26), both Ken and most Evangelicals do not do this that often. And as I also point out, to compound the dilemma they are in, that line of thinking means there is nothing actually essential to the Christian Liturgy, which is ridiculous, and results in the Protestant being able to leave out anything they want on any given Sunday.

Now, it's important to note that while this massive problem didn't bother Ken nor will it trouble most other Protestants, the fact is it should, and I believe that it eventually will bother them. For now, it's great that some seeds were planted. I strongly believe that if more Catholics would start using the UCAA, I swear that this will be the downfall of Westminster Seminary in a few short years.

The ultimate and most effective Catholic apologetics argument against Protestantism.

I have come to the conclusion that the most powerful apologetics argument that a Catholic can make against Protestantism is that their Sunday Liturgy is actually man-made and thus blatant idolatry. Let me explain this more.

The most important duty a human has, regardless even of whether they are a Christian or not, is to worship God. This should be - without a doubt - an obvious truth that everyone can agree upon. Given this, a person must not only worship God, they must do so properly, i.e., they must worship as God has instructed them to do. This means that Liturgy requires divine revelation, because otherwise the person is "worshiping" God based on what sounds good to their human mind...but there is a word for worshiping according to what sounds good to you: it's called idolatry. So the only way to escape idolatry is to worship according to how God has divinely revealed it. Which leads us to the key problem which all Protestants face.

A powerful OT foreshadowing of the Papacy.

A friend of mine pointed out an amazing Old Testament foreshadowing of the Papacy that I'd like to share (and I think it's as important as Isaiah 22:22-23). The passage comes from the conclusion of Genesis, where the Patriarch Jacob (later renamed "Israel," Gen 32:28) was on his deathbed and giving each of his 12 sons (the Twelve Tribes of Israel) a specific blessing. When it came to his son Judah (Genesis 49:8-12), this is part of what Israel said to him:

Judah, your brothers shall praise you; your father's sons shall bow down before you. The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet, until tribute comes to him; and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.

Here Jacob (Father Israel) predicts that the Tribe of Judah would one day come to lead the Twelve Tribes of Israel. As you can probably guess, a Catholic should see a parallel here for the Papal Office, with Peter being one of the Twelve Apostles being selected to be the leader of the other Apostles.

Some might object that if an OT image is not explicitly called out in the New Testament, then the OT image cannot really be said to be a prefigurment/prophecy. But this "rule" simply isn't valid, for the Early Church Fathers were steeped in OT typology, and even though texts such as Genesis 3:15 are never directly quoted in the New Testament, nobody would deny this text is the Proto-Evangelium (i.e. First Gospel). And given that the Twelve Apostles are most certainly premised on the prefigurement of the Twelve Tribes (Matt 19:28; Rev 21:12-14), the notion that there would be other prefigurments is not at all a stretch. 

Another parallel to note is that even after the united 12 Tribes later fell into sin, idolatry, and broke into two kingdoms (the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judah), it was clear that God's favor and chosen kingly lineage still remained with Judah (Micah 5:2; Rev 5:5). From this analogy we can gather that even if a Pope were to fall into sin, this in no way entails the Papacy somehow loses it's authority or that schism is ever justified. It was no accident that Saint Paul told the Holy Roman Church, "The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet." (Rom 16:20; cf Gen 3:15)