Second century Christians would have given their eye teeth for my Bible’s table of Contents.
Today1 is the feast of Pope St. Damasus I, the pope who many believe to have issued the first authoritative list of the books of the Bible in 382–the Decree of Damasus.2 Up until that point, there was no official canon of Scripture. Nobody knew with any certainty how many books belonged in the Old Testament, much less the New. And because Scripture doesn’t and can’t testify to its own inspiration, we would have been in a great deal of trouble if it were our only authority.
But God is good and bestowed authority on the Church. The Church, inspired by God, then pronounced by the power of the Holy Spirit which books were also inspired by God. The whole question merits a far longer discussion than I’ve got time for at the moment, but I’ll give you the crux of the whole Catholic-Protestant debate in a nutshell, as seen by Karl Keating in Catholicism and Fundamentalism.
The Gospels are fairly reliable historical texts. While historians don’t consider them Gospel truth,3 they’re generally considered to be accurate as regards the major events and themes of the life of Christ.
The Gospels tell us Jesus claimed to be God. While he doesn’t say outright, “I am God,” statements like, “Before Abraham was, I am” (Jn 8:58) and “The Father and I are one” (Jn 10:30) leave little room for any other interpretation.
The Resurrection proves this claim. If you really want to hear me prove the divinity of Christ, watch this video. If you don’t have 40 minutes, suffice it to say that if he claimed to be God and then rose form the dead, he’s God.
Jesus, who was divine, founded an inspired Church. Matthew 16:18-19. He gave Peter the keys and promised to protect his Church against error.
The inspired Church gives us an inspired Bible. If you’re not convinced by the Decree of Damasus, we could find plenty of other authoritative lists. The date doesn’t matter so much for this discussion, just the fact of Scripture being canonized by the Church. Otherwise, how can we know which books belong? Augustine himself said, “I would not believe in the Gospel if the authority of the Catholic Church did not move me to do so.”
Note that this isn’t a circular argument; it starts with the Bible as a historical text and ends with the Bible as an inspired text–two distinct and largely unrelated claims. What’s key here is that the inspiration of Scripture rests on the inspiration of the Church. Without an inspired Church, the argument falls apart.
In fact, I’ve never heard a reasonable argument for the canon of Scripture that didn’t rely on Christ’s power at work in the Church. Sure, people have had personal experiences of the Spirit at work in various individual books, but to know for sure that God inspired each book? That requires some kind of outside authority–an authority nobody outside of Rome4 even claims. You might feel that you know for sure that John is inspired or Isaiah or Deuteronomy. But unless you have a Church, the best you’re going to get is a “fallible collection of infallible books.”5 I’m not willing to stake my life on a fallible collection.
What is any man who has been in the real outer world, for instance, to make of the everlasting cry that Catholic traditions are condemned by the Bible? It indicates a jumble of topsy-turvy tests and tail-foremost arguments, of which I never could at any time see the sense. The ordinary sensible sceptic or pagan is standing in the street (in the supreme character of the man in the street) and he sees a procession go by of the priests of some strange cult, carrying their object of worship under a canopy, some of them wearing high head-dresses and carrying symbolical staffs, others carrying scrolls and sacred records, others carrying sacred images and lighted candles before them, others sacred relics in caskets or cases, and so on. I can understand the spectator saying, “This is all hocus-pocus”; I can even understand him, in moments of irritation, breaking up the procession, throwing down the images, tearing up the scrolls, dancing on the priests and anything else that might express that general view. I can understand his saying, “Your croziers are bosh, your candles are bosh, your statues and scrolls and relics and all the rest of it are bosh.” But in what conceivable frame of mind does he rush in to select one particular scroll of the scriptures of this one particular group (a scroll which had always belonged to them and been a part of their hocus-pocus, if it was hocus-pocus); why in the world should the man in the street say that one particular scroll was not bosh, but was the one and only truth by which all the other things were to be condemned? Why should it not be as superstitious to worship the scrolls as the statues, of that one particular procession? Why should it not be as reasonable to preserve the statues as the scrolls, by the tenets of that particular creed? To say to the priests, “Your statues and scrolls are condemned by our common sense,” is sensible. To say, “Your statues are condemned by your scrolls, and we are going to worship one part of your procession and wreck the rest,” is not sensible from any standpoint, least of all that of the man in the street.
Reject the whole of the Church if you like. Reject Saints and Mary and the Eucharist and the Pope AND Scripture. But to use the Scripture given to you by the pope to reject the pope? To take the Bible, which was far less certain to the early Church than was the virginity of Mary, and use it to reject Mary? Chesterton doesn’t think it makes any sense at all. I’m inclined to agree.
In 1571, the Christian world was under attack. The Reformation had divided Christians, causing them to war with one another rather than uniting to turn their attention against the advancing Turks. On October 7, the Muslim Ottoman Empire sent ships from the port of Lepanto in a battle that would decide the fate of Europe; if the Ottomans won, the Mediterranean would be theirs. It would be just a matter of time before they took (and converted) much of Europe.1
The Battle of Lepanto by Paolo Veronese–check out that heavenly intercession!
It was a terrible threat, and some few nations sent troops under the great Don Juan. But others were too busy quibbling over “minor” matters of doctrine to come to the aid of Christendom. And so Christian forces were far outnumbered.
Pope St. Pius V called on all Christians to pray the Rosary for victory. On the afternoon of the battle, he is said to have had a heavenly vision of a victory for the Europeans, holding off the Turks and preserving the Christian identity of Europe (until they gave it away of their own accord in recent years). The Holy Father declared a feast in honor of Our Lady of Victory, today called the Feast of the Holy Rosary.
I’ll go into the Rosary more later–for today, I just want to give you one of my favorite poems of all time: Lepanto by G.K. Chesterton. It’s long but brilliant. If you’ve got an audience–or even if you don’t–read it aloud. (Fair warning: Chesterton is not the most culturally sensitive fellow. His epithets are not my own.)
White founts falling in the Courts of the sun,
And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;
There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared,
It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard;
It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips;
For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships.
They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy,
They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea,
And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss,
And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross.
The cold queen of England is looking in the glass;
The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass;
From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun,
And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.
Dim drums throbbing, in the hills half heard,
Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred,
Where, risen from a doubtful seat and half attainted stall,
The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall,
The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung,
That once went singing southward when all the world was young.
In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid,
Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade.
Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far,
Don John of Austria is going to the war,
Stiff flags straining in the night-blasts cold
In the gloom black-purple, in the glint old-gold,
Torchlight crimson on the copper kettle-drums,
Then the tuckets, then the trumpets, then the cannon, and he comes.
Don John laughing in the brave beard curled,
Spurning of his stirrups like the thrones of all the world,
Holding his head up for a flag of all the free.
Love-light of Spain–hurrah!
Death-light of Africa!
Don John of Austria
Is riding to the sea.
Mahound is in his paradise above the evening star,
(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)
He moves a mighty turban on the timeless houri’s knees,
His turban that is woven of the sunsets and the seas.
He shakes the peacock gardens as he rises from his ease,
And he strides among the tree-tops and is taller than the trees;
And his voice through all the garden is a thunder sent to bring
Black Azrael and Ariel and Ammon on the wing.
Giants and the Genii,
Multiplex of wing and eye,
Whose strong obedience broke the sky
When Solomon was king.
They rush in red and purple from the red clouds of the morn,
From the temples where the yellow gods shut up their eyes in scorn;
They rise in green robes roaring from the green hells of the sea
Where fallen skies and evil hues and eyeless creatures be,
On them the sea-valves cluster and the grey sea-forests curl,
Splashed with a splendid sickness, the sickness of the pearl;
They swell in sapphire smoke out of the blue cracks of the ground,–
They gather and they wonder and give worship to Mahound.
And he saith, “Break up the mountains where the hermit-folk can hide,
And sift the red and silver sands lest bone of saint abide,
And chase the Giaours flying night and day, not giving rest,
For that which was our trouble comes again out of the west.
We have set the seal of Solomon on all things under sun,
Of knowledge and of sorrow and endurance of things done.
But a noise is in the mountains, in the mountains, and I know
The voice that shook our palaces–four hundred years ago:
It is he that saith not ‘Kismet’; it is he that knows not Fate;
It is Richard, it is Raymond, it is Godfrey at the gate!
It is he whose loss is laughter when he counts the wager worth,
Put down your feet upon him, that our peace be on the earth.”
For he heard drums groaning and he heard guns jar,
(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)
Sudden and still–hurrah!
Bolt from Iberia!
Don John of Austria
Is gone by Alcalar.
St. Michaels on his Mountain in the sea-roads of the north
(Don John of Austria is girt and going forth.)
Where the grey seas glitter and the sharp tides shift
And the sea-folk labour and the red sails lift.
He shakes his lance of iron and he claps his wings of stone;
The noise is gone through Normandy; the noise is gone alone;
The North is full of tangled things and texts and aching eyes,
And dead is all the innocence of anger and surprise,
And Christian killeth Christian in a narrow dusty room,
And Christian dreadeth Christ that hath a newer face of doom,
And Christian hateth Mary that God kissed in Galilee,–
But Don John of Austria is riding to the sea.
Don John calling through the blast and the eclipse
Crying with the trumpet, with the trumpet of his lips,
Trumpet that sayeth ha!
Domino gloria!
Don John of Austria
Is shouting to the ships.
King Philip’s in his closet with the Fleece about his neck
(Don John of Austria is armed upon the deck.)
The walls are hung with velvet that is black and soft as sin,
And little dwarfs creep out of it and little dwarfs creep in.
He holds a crystal phial that has colours like the moon,
He touches, and it tingles, and he trembles very soon,
And his face is as a fungus of a leprous white and grey
Like plants in the high houses that are shuttered from the day,
And death is in the phial and the end of noble work,
But Don John of Austria has fired upon the Turk.
Don John’s hunting, and his hounds have bayed–
Booms away past Italy the rumour of his raid.
Gun upon gun, ha! ha!
Gun upon gun, hurrah!
Don John of Austria
Has loosed the cannonade.
The Pope was in his chapel before day or battle broke,
(Don John of Austria is hidden in the smoke.)
The hidden room in man’s house where God sits all the year,
The secret window whence the world looks small and very dear.
He sees as in a mirror on the monstrous twilight sea
The crescent of his cruel ships whose name is mystery;
They fling great shadows foe-wards, making Cross and Castle dark,
They veil the plumèd lions on the galleys of St. Mark;
And above the ships are palaces of brown, black-bearded chiefs,
And below the ships are prisons, where with multitudinous griefs,
Christian captives sick and sunless, all a labouring race repines
Like a race in sunken cities, like a nation in the mines.
They are lost like slaves that sweat, and in the skies of morning hung
The stair-ways of the tallest gods when tyranny was young.
They are countless, voiceless, hopeless as those fallen or fleeing on
Before the high Kings’ horses in the granite of Babylon.
And many a one grows witless in his quiet room in hell
Where a yellow face looks inward through the lattice of his cell,
And he finds his God forgotten, and he seeks no more a sign–
(But Don John of Austria has burst the battle-line!)
Don John pounding from the slaughter-painted poop,
Purpling all the ocean like a bloody pirate’s sloop,
Scarlet running over on the silvers and the golds,
Breaking of the hatches up and bursting of the holds,
Thronging of the thousands up that labour under sea
White for bliss and blind for sun and stunned for liberty.
Vivat Hispania!
Domino Gloria!
Don John of Austria
Has set his people free!
Cervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath
(Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.)
And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain,
Up which a lean and foolish knight for ever rides in vain,
And he smiles, but not as Sultans smile, and settles back the blade….
(But Don John of Austria rides home from the Crusade.)
There’s nothing anti-Islamic about this. Christians wanted Europe to stay Christian; Muslims, naturally, wanted it to be Muslim. Hence the battle. [↩]
