 | The basis of all teachings is what Christ had taught.
Apostles taught what they had heard from Christ. |
| The New Testament was written, at least twenty years after
the formation of the Church. |
| Jesus Christ had not entrusted anybody to write a book. But
the word "teaching" includes writing of books also. |
| When the apostles were alive, spoken words were enough, but
after their death, people depended on written words. |
| The Bible has a very important place because its contents
are God’s revelations. It’s messages are authentic as it is the revelation from
God. |
| When we read the Gospels during the Holy Qurbana, we accept
it as the living word of God. |
| In the Holy Qurbana, after the reading of the Gospel at the
time when the people sing a hymn the priest says a prayer silently praising Christ for
giving God’s words. |
| The Church is divided into different groups, so if we
depend on the spoken words from others, we will get many contradictory ideas. |
| Even though it was written by different people in different
periods, it has got the position of one book. |
| In the Old Testament, we can see the expectation of the
coming redeemer. In the first four books of the New Testament, there is a description of
Jesus Christ the redeemer |
| In Acts of Apostles, we can see the influence of the
personality and teachings of Jesus in history. |
| The Bible was not written in order, by formation of a
committee as we make books today. |
| When there were different writings claimed to be handed
down through reliable traditions it became necessary to select the true writings. Such
books collected after selection was called Canonical books. |
| The selection of the Books of the New Testament was first
done in the Eastern regional council held in A.D. 360 at Laodicca. A selection was also
done from the Western regional council held in 397 and 419in Carthage. |
| Church is the witness and custodian of the scriptures. But
the church is not the author or the producer. The church has no right to modify by adding
or reducing the contents of the Bible, but it can improve the translation by comparing to
the original writings. |
| As it is pointed out in Hebrew 1:1-2, in the Old Testament,
God spoke in many ways at several occasions. But in the New Testament, there is what Jesus
Christ had directly spoken to us. So, we cannot place Old Testament and New Testament on
the same level. |
| The customs and practices of the church have developed from
the many traditions based on the teachings of the Bible. |
| Child baptism, the prayer of the intercession of the
saints, the prayer of the departed, the rituals of the holy sacraments, all these things
are not mentioned clearly in the Bible. But they are existing in the church because they
are not against the teachings of the Bible. There is no Christian denomination without any
customs and practices taken from tradition. |
| There is no sacrament or service without any reading of the
Bible. |
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