Scott, it just struck me that you might have skipped down to the link without noticing my attempt to answer the OP. If so, then my perceived offering of the bullet-ed points as a 'simple answer' must have made me look very bone-headed. Which I am. Bone-headed, I mean; but enough so without any extra help.
I offered the link in an attempt to be a good conversation partner.
In the same spirit, I think
Cud's distinction is an important one, though perhaps not his offered points.
It is very common to anachronistically read
Bible back into the pages of scripture, and to conflate
Scripture with
Canon. It leads to all sorts of (perhaps ambiguously helpful?), authoritative 'traditions of men.'
For example: recently, in my favorite local used bookstore, two old gentlemen hunkered down in a corner. They were both evangelists of the ‘Old Time’ variety, and the theme of their huddle was the miserable state of the modern Xian. I eavesdropped as one story of lamentation after another was swapped. Finally, the shorter gentleman summarized the situation adequately. He described an obviously compromised individual who approached him after a service to express how wonderful the message was. I listened with interest. An appreciation for the old preacher’s message seemed a counter-intuitive reason for him to label the ‘audience member’ (his word) a fraud. Turns out that the proffered approval wasn’t the problem. The problem was that the man had no Bible with him. How did he know that the message was any good! Apparently, compliments from this sort of Xian were simply affronts to the godly.
That strikes me as an unbiblical sort of judgment to make- especially on the authority of the Bible. I think it comes from the conflation I've mentioned. The text of our Bibles knows nothing of Bibles.
* BIBLE: Does a bound, portable book, which is available for anyone to own for the sake of their own personal use appear anywhere in scripture?
Obviously not. Why?
Books are a relatively recent historical development. Mass printed books are even more recent, yet. Paper; printing- not to mention the education programs necessary to make literacy a common good… are all recent arivals. When our scripture was written, the required technology was still many centuries away. ‘Books’ were quite literally collections of scrolls, hand copied at a laborious rate. Priceless and difficult to store and transport.
Ok; so there’s no book-available to everyone and anyone- in the Bible.
But perhaps more to the point, the Bible is not only a bound book. It is an authoritatively bounded book. It is a closed canon.
* CLOSED CANON: Does a closed Canon appear in scripture?
Obviously not. Why not?
The New Testament is the expansion of scripture. The only church presented in scripture is a church with an open Canon. In addition, nowhere in scripture are we told what is or isn’t scripture; nor are we told that the writing of scripture would definitely cease. We have authoritative positions on these things, but we didn’t learn them from scripture.
It is commonplace to substitute the word ‘Canon’ for ‘Scripture,’ but the words refer to different things. Most religions have sacred scripture, but very few have a definitive closed Canon. I know of only three, and they are all related: Judaism, Xianity and Islam.
* SACRED SCRIPTURE : Do fluid, fuzzily defined and growing collections of texts, which religious communities use for sacred purposes, appear in scripture?
Of course. For believers both ancients and modern, scripture is understood to be sacred scripture.
Okay. So scripture knows of scripture, but not a closed Canon or an individually available volume to which persons might (must?) go to check up on things. Is that a big deal? Is the distinction worth noting? Would nullifying either of the last two in the life of the church- especially the Evangelical tradition- be a big deal? Scripture undefined and open to addition! Scripture not available to the average believer unless mediated by another!
