The Bible, the Church, and Authority

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At the Sunday class from February 6 until Lent begins in March, Fr Austin will give short talks on The Bible, the Church, and Authority. These talks will be on questions concerning the Bible such as: What books are in it? What is the history of its acceptance as a “canon”? What is its relationship to the church? What makes it authoritative?

There is a remarkably clear short book by Professor Joseph Lienhard of Fordham of that title which participants might want to read in parallel to the class, but Fr Austin will not be expecting that anyone has read that book. 

The topic for February 13: Fr Austin intends to start with the early Christian problem of how to understand the Jewish Scriptures. There were some false starts that the church rejected, and then Irenaeus offered a theological account to support the doctrinal position of the church. He’ll then move on to the New Testament, with an overview of what it is and then the interesting question of why we have it, why it appears (rather abruptly, as far as we can tell) in the second half of the second century.

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