Comment on All the guilt none of the salvation

starik@lemmy.zip ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

• Mr_Fish@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  A. It kinda depends who you ask. Some Christians are cessationists, meaning they believe the gifts of the spirit stopped happening after the apostles in the new testament. Those Christians will universally say no new scripture can be added. On the other hand, Catholics believe in papal infallibility, which means that in certain conditions (I’m not sure what they are, I’m not a catholic), the pope can make infallible doctrine, which is almost as highly valued as scriptural doctrine.

  B. The list of books in the Bible has technically changed since the original canonization in the 4th century, but that was only removals like the apocrypha as far as I know. To add a new book, especially one written so long after the new testament was written, is basically impossible. It has been tried by the Mormons and arguably by Islam (although I don’t think they see the new testament letters as scripture so it’s another change on top of adding), but both of those changed so much that they’re no longer Christian.

  I technically won’t say God can’t reveal more to humanity, enough to make another book of the Bible, but we already have the Bible, with no new additions for nearly 2000 years. If God was going to inspire more scripture, he probably would have done it by now.

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• ArchBtw@ani.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Upon a quick search it looks like it’s done.

  Revelation 22:18–19  18For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book:

  19 And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.

  Deuteronomy 4:2 2 Do not add to what I command you and do not subtract from it, but keep the commands of the Lord your God that I give you.

  Proverbs 30:5–6 “Every word of God is flawless; he is a shield to those who take refuge in him. Do not add to his words, or he will rebuke you and prove you a liar.

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  • Live_your_lives@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    You have to be really careful to distinguish between the position that the canon is temporarily, functionally closed and that it is closed permanently. You can definitely find plenty of people who support the strict position, but I believe that it is less popular than the looser position overall, especially when looking outside of Christian apologetics circles.

    There’s a few good reasons to think that the canon is only temporarily closed, not permanently closed:

    1. The Bible wasn’t canonized or seen as a single book until after Revelation was written, so it is unlikely that John had the whole Bible in mind.
    2. Revelation says that the restriction is on “the book of this prophecy”, i.e., the book of Revelation itself. Even if you correctly consider that “prophecy” is more than just foretelling, there are parts of the Bible that don’t count as that.
    3. If you read them carefully, you’ll see that Deuteronomy and Proverbs do not say anything against saying God’s words in a different way or recontextuallizing them to apply them to a different situation. The problem only comes about if you change the meaning of the message.
    4. At least according to both Claude and GPT, the idea of a strict closure didn’t take root until the Reformation (about 1.5 millennia later).
    5. A non-strict interpretation fits better with the fact that the story of the Bible is not yet finished. If the story is unfinished then it’s likely that God will do more works which ought to be recorded. For example, it would probably be helpful to the people living through the great tribulation to know what the actual history was that led up to that event.

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  • FrChazzz@lemmus.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    The Bible is not a single volume but a collection/anthology of writings put together over many centuries. Further, the canon of scripture was decided after several hundred years after the writing of the most recent book (Revelation). Which is all to say that the Bible, at least in the cited references, cannot be self-referential because “the Bible” didn’t exist at the times of those references. They were all individual writings. So Revelation, for instance, is referring to the words of the prophecy contained in Revelation, NOT the Bible.

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• kopasu22@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  I think you could, but there’s a good chance that it would emerge as a separate religion out of Christianity instead of changing the identity of Christianity. Another user said it well already, that Mormonism and Islam are basically already this.

  The new scripture develops upon the ideas of the existing religion, but when a large group rejects the additions, a schism occurs, causing the existing religion to stay mostly the same while the new religion goes off and does its own thing. Hence why Judaism did not stop being a thing when Christianity emerged; enough people rejected the legitimacy of the additions and just continued on as they were.

  So theoretically I’d say the answer is yes, but it’d need to be compelling enough to convince the vast majority of Christians to get behind it, otherwise it just becomes its own thing.

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