What is the Primary Purpose of the Bible?

Why did Catholic bishops meet to determine a list of books?

Familiarity breeds contempt, as the old saying goes. Most people, and especially Christians, are familiar with the Bible but have never bothered to ask several foundational questions about the Bible, such as:

1. What is the Bible?

2. Where did we get the Bible from?

3. What is the primary purpose of the Bible?

4. How do we know the Bible is true and correct?

5. How is the Bible supposed to be used?

Until you know the answers to these questions, simply reading the Bible is flat out dangerous unless you understand what the Bible is and what it is not. Let’s jump right into it and answer these questions.

1. What is the Bible?

Well first off, the word “bible” comes from the Greek word “biblia”, which means “the books”. So the Bible is a collection of books which were so important, foundational and instrumental to the developing Western Civilization that they simply named this collection as “the books” and everyone knew exactly what collection they were talking about.

Think about that for a second, and consider that the Catholic religion was so immersed in the culture and civilization that it formed and informed the entire society. Every area of life was affected by and transformed by the Catholic faith. So when you referred to something as “the books”, everyone knew you were referring to something Catholic and therefore holy.

Now the Bible is a collection of 73 books that cover both the Old and New Covenants that God created and participated/participates in with mankind. There are 46 books of the Old Covenant and 27 books of the New Covenant. (These collections are also called the Old Testament and New Testament. Testament means covenant.) The 73 books comprise a wide variety of different types of literature written by many multiple different authors. Some of these types of literature include history, stories, poems, letters, liturgical, and narrative books to name a few. Each one has a specific audience it was written to and each one has a different set of topics or issues that it addresses. They are also written with various styles of writing that each author uses for their specific purposes.

2. Where did we get the Bible from?

The 46 books of the Old Covenant were written and compiled over a period of several thousand years carried along by the Israelites. They were originally written in Hebrew but the Israelites were conquered several times (after they obstinately rejected God and His covenant) and were subjected to several exiles from their land of Israel to neighboring lands and empires. During these times the Israelites learned other languages and as a result, the 46 books of the Old Covenant were translated into Greek and this translation was called the Septuagint. The Septuagint was the version of the Scriptures that Jesus and the Apostles knew and read. It is the version of the Old Covenant that is mostly cited in the books of the New Covenant.

The books of the New Covenant were written by the Apostles, including Paul, or men who were with the Apostles and learned directly from them. These were all written in Greek as well (except the Gospel of Matthew which was originally written in Hebrew/Aramaic because his first intended audience for his Gospel was the Jewish converts to Christianity). Various collections of these books were kept by Catholic congregations in each city in the first few centuries of the Christian faith. (Persecutions were virulent at that time, so Catholics had to meet secretly for Mass and had to hide their copies of the Septuagint and their copies of various Christian writings they had in their possession.) Through these first few centuries of the Christian faith and terrible persecution, Catholics managed to preserve most of their writings and all of the oral teachings of the Church as well.

Thankfully in the early 4th century, Constantine became emperor of the Roman Empire, and he made it legal for Christians to live and practice their religion. So over the next several decades, Christians could safely communicate with each other and travel more frequently to visit each other, since they could do so openly and without fear. Naturally this allowed the Catholic Church to start spreading even more and making the Christian faith more open and formal. They built churches and cathedrals to worship in and celebrated their faith publicly finally. This naturally led to the question of which books were allowed to be read in Mass and which books were not.

They took this question very seriously, since with even a cursory reading of the first five books of the Old Covenant (the Pentateuch), it is very clear that God is extremely specific about how He wants to be worshipped and what is allowed and not allowed when offering adoration and sacrifice to Him. So Christians wanted to know which books were permissible to be read in the Divine Liturgy (or Mass).

Over the preceding centuries, there were non-authoritative lists of allowed books that were permitted to be read in Mass, but there was never a defined and authoritative list of which books were permitted for the universal Church. There were some books which were widely accepted as divinely inspired and others which were vociferously argued for and against as being divinely inspired. The books that comprise the Bible came from both of those groups and other books in both groups were rejected. Books such as the Didache, St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians (which we do not have a copy of today but is mentioned in 1 Cor 5:9), these books contains teachings directly from the Apostles but were rejected from inclusion in the Bible. So how did we get a list of books that then were grouped together to be called “the books” or the Bible?

3. What is the primary purpose of the Bible?

With so much confusion about which books were acceptable for being read and used in the Divine Liturgy (Mass), it was decided that Catholic bishops would meet in Rome in 382AD to determine the list, or canon, of books. They settled on the 46 books of the Septuagint and the 27 books of the New Covenant.

There were several more councils like this one over the next few decades. They included councils in Hippo (393AD), Carthage (397AD) and Carthage (419AD). At each of these councils, the same collection of 73 books were agreed upon. In fact, we still have the text of the declaration from the Council of Carthage 397AD. It has some very important things to note in it:

16 It was also determined that besides the Canonical Scriptures nothing be read in the Church under the title of divine Scriptures. The Canonical Scriptures are these: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua the son of Nun, Judges, Ruth, four books of Kings, two books of Paraleipomena, Job, the Psalter, five books of Solomon, the books of the twelve prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezechiel, Daniel, Tobit, Judith, Esther, two books of Esdras, two Books of the Maccabees.

17 Of the New Testament: four books of the Gospels, one book of the Acts of the Apostles, thirteen Epistles of the Apostle Paul, one epistle of the same [writer] to the Hebrews, two Epistles of the Apostle Peter, three of John, one of James, one of Jude, one book of the Apocalypse of John.

18 So let the church over the sea be consulted to confirm this canon. Let it also be allowed that the Passions of Martyrs be read when their festivals are kept.

20 Let this be made known also to our brother and fellow-priest Boniface, or to other bishops of those parts, for the purpose of confirming that Canon. Because we have received from our fathers that those books must be read in the Church.

How they name and describe the books of the Bible is somewhat different from our descriptions/names today, but they are the same 73 books of the Bible today. It also notes that the “church over the sea” be consulted to confirm the canon. Carthage was in north Africa in the modern country of Tunisia. Over the Mediterranean Sea from Carthage is Rome. The Catholic bishops at this council sent this list to the Bishop of Rome for ratification. You see it also at the line about Boniface, who was Bishop of Rome at the time of the Council of Carthage in 419AD. (It took time for writings to get to their destination sometimes, and scribes when copying text of letters/books would sometimes insert the name of the current bishop or ruler if they weren’t sure of who was bishop or ruler when the decree was made.)

Another thing to note in this declaration is that saint feast days and festivals were already a set and integral part of the Christian world at this time. This one declaration from this Council undermines so much of Protestant arguments and theology that it is not a surprise that they do not educate or inform their congregations about where the Bible came from.

After these councils made their declarations about which books were inspired and could be read in the Divine Liturgy, the Christians everywhere then worked to gather all 73 of these books together into one collection. They called this collection “the books”, or Bible. This group of 73 books was then universally accepted by all Christians everywhere and remained unquestioned for the next ELEVEN CENTURIES. Every single Bible from the 5th century until the 16th century contained all 73 of these books, and everyone agreed on them.

So the answer to this question, about what the primary purpose of the Bible is, is evident from the canonization of the Bible. The books of the Bible were canonized to support the Divine Liturgy. That is the primary purpose of the Bible. There are other secondary purposes to Scripture, but their usage in the Mass is the first purpose to Scripture.

4. How do we know the Bible is true and correct?

This one question is very tricky for Protestants to answer, but exceedingly easy for Catholics. Protestants have to use circular and self-referential answers to be able to give any response at all. They must declare that God tells us that His word is true, but the question is how do we know which specific books are His word? They will answer that we know because God preserved those books which are His word through the centuries. But this is an argument that Muslims and Mormons can and do use as well. They claim that the Koran and the Book of Mormon are the word of God, and both of those books say they are the word of God. We can’t simply accept this answer that God has preserved the books, because there are also books that are preserved that Protestants do NOT accept as the word of God.

I invite you to read how a Protestant website tries to answer this question and let’s take a look at their answer and see how many glaring holes we can find. The first problem for this website is that everyone they cite, which they use to give support for a canonization process, is a Catholic. Every single one of them: Ignatius, Clement, Polycarp, Iranaeus, and Hippolytus are ALL Catholic. So they are admitting that God was working through Catholics in canonizing the Bible.

Second, they mention the Councils of Hippo (393AD) and Carthage (397AD) to show that the 27 books of the New Covenant were accepted widely. But as noted above, those councils canonized 73 books instead of the 66-book Protestant canon. Additionally, we cannot forget that these were Catholic Church councils and every bishop in attendance was a Catholic bishop.

Third, they claim that these councils followed four principles when determining which books were inspired and which were not. This claim is entirely unsubstantiated. It is a complete guess and made up list of principles from Protestants where they are attempting to hide the fact that these Councils were selecting books to be read in the Divine Liturgy (Mass). They can’t actually cite any sources for their claims of these four principles being the method on which the councils canonized the Bible. (We’ll ignore the fact that the 3rd principle is self-refuting, and also ignore in the 2nd principle that several books that were canonized were NOT accepted by the Body of Christ at large, until they were canonized.)

The fourth and final point on this Protestant attempt to answer is that they claim the canonization process was flawed “but God brought the early church to the recognition of the books He had inspired”. The problem with this claim is that the “early church” recognized SEVENTY THREE books as inspired and this Protestant website claims that is WRONG. So apparently God brought the early church almost to the truth and then let them remain there for ELEVEN CENTURIES! The truth is the website is trying to pretend that only 66 books were canonized by the “early church” and they don’t want any Protestants to recognize that the “early church” canonized 73 books.

The answer to this question of how we know the Bible is true and correct is because the Catholic Church, the only Church Jesus built, has told us that the Bible is true and correct. We also have the oral word of God, called Sacred Tradition, which also testifies that the Bible is true and correct. Catholics can answer this question while Protestants cannot.

This leads us to our final question…

5. How is the Bible supposed to be used?

With the last five centuries after the invention of the doctrine of Sola Scriptura (Scripture Alone), many people think that the Bible is basically an instruction manual for Christians. They think it is like the Koran and the Book of Mormon and that the Bible forms the foundation of the Christian faith. This view is false.

As noted above, the primary purpose of the Bible is to support the Divine Liturgy (Mass). It is to support the New Covenant where the Body and Blood of Christ are made Present on the altar and we participate in the same sacrifice that Christ made at the Last Supper and on Calvary. The New Covenant is the Eucharist, which is the source and summit of the Christian faith.

We must remember that even Scripture points to the authority of the Church (Matthew 18, John 21, Hebrews 13 among many others), the authority of Scripture (2 Tim 3, John 10 among others) and the authority of Sacred Tradition, the oral word of God (John 5, 1 Thess 2 among others). Scripture does not say that only Scripture has authority, in fact it says the opposite. Scripture says the Church has authority to bind and loose on earth AND in Heaven. Jesus is explicit that we must “listen to the Church” in Matthew 16. A person who refuses is to be thrown out of the congregation.

We must also keep in mind that St Peter even warns about those who are reading the Scriptures but refusing to listen to the Church about how to understand them. He even says much in Scripture is hard to understand and that many will twist Scripture to their own damnation.

2 Peter 3:15 And count the forbearance of our Lord as salvation. So also our beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, 16 speaking of this as he does in all his letters. There are some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures.

There is also the time where Jesus mocked the Pharisees that they possessed the Scriptures and knew them inside and out, but still missed salvation Himself who was standing right in front of them.

John 5:39 You search the scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness to me; 40 yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.

So the answer to this final question is that the Bible is supposed to be used, first and foremost, in supporting the Divine Liturgy. It is also supposed to be used in education ourselves and others about Christ and the revelation He has given to mankind. But we must read the Scriptures within the teaching of the Catholic Church. If our interpretation of Scripture ever gets to the point where we contradict a doctrine of the Catholic Church, we are in error and must once again listen to the Church to properly understand the Bible.