Teaching by word of mouth

So you can see that, in the early days of the Church the Christians had no Scriptures except for the books of the Old Testament.  They just had the teaching which the Apostles had given them by word of mouth, teaching which included, among other things, instruction about the Sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, Reconciliation (Penance) and the Eucharist.  Soon there was a need for a written record, and many accounts of Our Lord’s life were written, as well, of course, as letters (epistles) which the Apostles wrote in order to keep in touch with Christians in different places.  But the Faith itself was entrusted by the Apostles to the Bishops whom they appointed to take their place.  And the bishop of each city or town kept it safe and handed it on to his successor. 

The New Testament

Some of the ‘Gospels’ or Lives of Our Lord that were written were false Gospels, and contained many untrue and absurd stories.  Now, what the Church did was to compare all these writings with the teaching and tradition of the Apostles which had been handed down by the bishops of each place.  This teaching and tradition was everywhere the same because it was the truth, and Our Lord had promised that the Holy Spirit, who came to the Apostles at Pentecost, would guide the Church into all truth (John 16:13; 14:26).  So the Church threw out the writings which did not agree with the Christian Faith as it had been received from the Apostles, but the writings which did agree with it were kept.  By about the year 200 AD the Church in every part had in this way pretty well decided to keep the writings that we know as the New Testament, and so these were put alongside the Old Testament as the Word of God.  The space between the first Pentecost, which was in around 30 AD, is not so long as it seems.  For in 200 AD there was still alive a Bishop called Irenaeus.  Now Irenaeus had learnt the Faith from another bishop called Polycarp, and Polycarp had been taught it by St John the Apostle himself.

So it was that Bishop Irenaeus, wrote, “We have learned from none others the plan of our salvation, than from those through whom the Gospel has come down to us, which they did at one time proclaim in public, and, at a later period, by the will of God, handed down to us in the Scriptures, to be the ground and pillar of our faith”. (1)

So you can see that the true meaning of the Bible agrees exactly with the Faith which the Early Church had received from the Apostles.  And the teaching of the Bible is the same as the teaching of the Early Church, and that is still the teaching of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church today.