Second, that the apostles did not write in accordance with God’s mandate.
Second, that the apostles did not write in accordance with God’s mandate.
§ 381. (II) “If Christ and the apostles had intended to bind and restrict the Word of God to Scripture, Christ would have openly commanded a matter of such great importance and the apostles would have borne witness that they were writing in accord with a mandate of God. Yet nowhere do we read this.” We respond. (1) On the contrary, Christ both commanded the apostles to write and the apostles bore witness that they were writing because of a command from God, as we made clear earlier in the chapter on the efficient cause. (2) If the apostles had not had a command to write, how could their Scripture be God-breathed? (3) If the apostles did not intend to restrict the Word of God to Scripture, as Bellarmine says here, for what other end did they write? Why did they write so many books and so many letters? According to Bellarmine’s hypothesis, they could have omitted this effort and sent us back solely to the Roman see. However, one can pass an accurate judgment on this entire argument from what we have said earlier.