Presupp Applied to Canonical Studies with Dr. Michael Kruger

Presuppositionalism and Canonical Studies

Host Elias Ayala, and today I'm super excited to have with me Dr. Michael Krueger, who is a professor. Are you still a professor over there? Okay, at RTS, Reformed Theological Seminary, right? And he's very well known for his work in canonicity issues, you know, the canon of scripture, how the canon was developed, and a bunch of questions related to that specific area.

And so I'm very, very excited to have Dr. Krueger with us today, and we're going to try and see if we could apply some presuppositional application to that specific area, and then hopefully we can see where the conversation goes from there.

So before we officially start, and I welcome Dr. Krueger officially and give him an opportunity to say hello to everyone and to maybe give a brief summary of what he does over there at RTS, I'm just going to make a few announcements, some upcoming interviews.

I have Doug Wilson coming on the 24th, Jeff Durbin on the 29th, Dr. James Anderson on May 9th, we've got Dr. Gary Habermas on May 12th, and Dr. Douglas, I keep on messing up his last name, but Gruthius, I think it's Gruthius, probably on May 15th, but we're working out that date.

So we got a bunch of great interviews, and in between there, I'll be shooting out some videos on some different applications of presuppositional methodology, so I know folks are really enjoying that content there.

Well, if you are enjoying the past episodes, please press the subscribe button on YouTube, and you could also check out the podcast on iTunes as well. Typically, if you don't catch the live stream, I try my best to rip the audio from the live stream and make it a podcast so that folks could avail themselves through that route, kind of if they don't want to watch the video and see our wonderful faces, and you just want to listen to our soothing voices in your iPhone, you can do that.

So with that being said, Dr. Kruger, or how would you like me to call you? You know, some doctors, don't call me doctor, just call me Mikey. I don't know if you're more informal, formal. What would you like me to call.

You? Whatever you want is fine. Mike is fine. Dr. Kruger is fine. It can be however you want to set.

It up. Okay, sounds good. So why don't you take a few moments and tell folks a little bit about.

Yourself? Yeah, well, as you noted, I'm at Reform Theological Seminary. I'm in the Charlotte campus, been here almost 20 years as professor of New Testament and early Christianity. Now I'm the president of the campus and been president of the campus for about the last eight years.

And my area of research and writing, as many of your listeners may know, is on the origins and development of the New Testament canon. Some dealing with manuscripts and textual criticism, but mainly canonical studies is of interest of mine.

And it's going to be largely on the New Testament side. Of course, I'm interested in the Old Testament too, in a broad sense, but most of my research has been on New Testament and particularly New Testament in the second century.

Why the Canon Matters for Apologetics

Yeah, great. Well, what is it specifically that got you into this specific area of study? I mean, you've written a bunch of books and this is obviously a focus of yours. What was the main thing that kind of pushed you into this area?

Because there's a vast array of topics one could cover with regards to New Testament studies and apologetics and things like that. Was your reasoning because of its apologetic import or just generally you were interested in the question,.

You wanted to explore it a little more? Well, a little bit of both. I mean, it certainly has a lot of apologetic implications just based on the implications of canon on the doctrine of scripture. What we think about the canon really affects what we think about the Bible.

And if you don't have a coherent answer for the problem of canon, you don't really have a coherent defense of scripture. So yes, there's apologetic value to it, but I have interest in it in its own right.

I'm fascinated by the role these books played in the early development of the Christian faith, the discussion of lost books, apocryphal gospels. My research with Larry Hurtado at the An Apocryphal Gospel Fragment from Oxyrhynchus, Oxyrhynchus 840.

So I think there's a lot of fascinating things about this in its own right, aside from its apologetic value. And for me,.

Manuscripts, text, and canon have just been front and center from the start. Okay. Now, would it be your estimation just on the popular level? Do you think that the average Christian is lacking greatly in the knowledge of this area?

And how do you think that affects our ability to present a powerful apologetic with regards to the different objections that are raised against the Christian.

Position? Yeah. My experience is, I mentioned a couple of things in that regard. My experience is that most Christians are fascinated with this area. They're very interested in it. I go and speak at a lot of churches and Christian organizations, college groups, and I always find that people are really wanting to talk about things like lost gospels and canon and text and how we got the books of our Bible.

So there's no doubt there's an interest. And by the way, that interest spans Christians. I think it's true collectively. Just people in general want to know. About our Bibles, even if they're not even in a church or even Christians at all.

That said, I think most Christians, even though they're fascinated by the subject, probably don't know all that much about it. I think they probably not had anybody in their midst that knows a lot that can tell them.

And I think there's a certain level of vulnerability there. You know, it's pretty common that every Thanksgiving or sorry, every Christmas and Easter, you know, there's an on the web or on a newspaper or magazine saying, hey, you know, you can't trust what your Bible says about the birth of Jesus or about the resurrection of Jesus.

And there's all kinds of attacks on the New Testament. And I think most people just don't know what to do with that. So when you talk about text and canon and reliability issues, it's really important, but the average believer just doesn't have much knowledge because they've never been taught.

And truthfully, their pastors probably haven't been taught either. Most seminaries don't address these issues at really any depth. And so there's not really any place for them to turn.

Presuppositional Methodology and Historical Evidence

Sure. Now, OK, so let's let's jump right into the conversation here now with regards to apologetics and folks over there at Reform Theological Seminary, a place like Westminster, very much heavily influenced by presuppositional thought.

People like Van Til, Frame, Bonson. Would you say that you hold to the presuppositional methodology with regards to how you do apologetics? Or are you kind of not so much wanting to put yourself in kind of the camp?

I know there's a lot of this like camp mentality. We want to avoid that. But how would you, if you could, identify your own perspective? And then we can kind of go from there.

Sure. Yeah. Well, I was a student of John Frames. One of the things that he was he's both a colleague at RTS. He just is emeritus professor at our Orlando campus. So he's a friend and a colleague, but also a former professor and mentor of mine.

And I've been very influenced by his thinking. And of course, he would definitely put himself on the presuppositional camp along with his mentor, effectively Van Til himself. And so I would be comfortable with those categories.

Now, several things are worth saying as soon as you say that. Say that you're presuppositional can mean a lot of different things, meaning that there's different versions of it. There's different perspectives on it.

I think Frame did a good job of nuancing Van Til, pointing out where Van Til may have been able to do better. Some places where he thinks Van Til was just mistaken and can improve his methodology. Van Til, obviously, is not infallible, nor are any of us.

Some people seem to think so. And so I appreciate Frame's willingness to say, hey, look, I'm a presuppositionalist, but I think there's ways we can articulate this argument more effectively. And he's done a good job.

And then I would put myself largely in the Framian camp, if we can say that, although there's lots of nuances there that could be added, but I'm comfortable by saying that. So yeah, I'm a presuppositionalist.

You'll notice my work on canon, I rarely actually use the term. And not because I don't believe in it, but because I think most people don't understand it. And it raises questions about methodology. And apologetics, I'm not really that concerned to raise at that point.

So I usually try to scoot around the terminology and just get to the heart.

Of the matter in the way I address canon. Yeah, that's what I like about your work, specifically. It's very easy to pick a side and then have to justify the side so that you can then apply the specific methodology to the specific area that you're addressing.

And that's kind of annoying. I like how you just employ and lay out the perspective within how you address the area without having to get bogged down with justifying the methodology and then kind of moving from there.

It's kind of seeped into what you're doing. I think at this point within apologetic history, if we say, I think we're past the point of always just having to lay out the entire method, defend every aspect of the method, and then kind of apply it to these other areas.

I think it's good to kind of just begin to make those applications and weave them into what we're doing. What do you think.

About that? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, one of the tiring things about these debates and apologetics, I'm sure you've experienced this too, is that the debates never get past methodology. And so you spend all your time debating methodology rather than actually doing apologetics.

That's right. And that's unfortunate. And I guess there's some inevitability to that. I mean, we do need to address method, and method matters. But what I've hoped to have accomplished in my work on canon is actually just doing the work.

And what it hopefully demonstrates to people is that you can actually have a reformed epistemology and a presuppositional approach and not have that negate good historical work. I mean, the honest truth is most presuppositionalists who are worried about arguing over methodology don't necessarily or haven't necessarily been the same ones that have done the hard historical work.

And there's a caricature out there that's unfortunate because it's been debunked so many times that presuppositionalists don't care about evidence or don't think evidence matters or that historical facts are irrelevant or that almost this fideistic approach.

And of course, that's been shown to be mistaken on so many levels. But hopefully, if you start dealing with stuff like canon, well, obviously, historical evidences do matter. And I deal a lot with those.

The question isn't whether you use them or whether they matter, but how you use them and the way they.

Sit within the larger structure of your argument. And I think that's a very important point that you made because you're right. I hear this all the time online. I'm not sure within the scholarly realm if that's an application that people try to hoist upon the presuppositional method.

But just from a popular level, people just assume presuppositionalists don't use evidence. And I mean, reading Van Til, reading Bantz, and I just haven't found that myself. And so I'm not sure where that comes from.

Where do you think, in your opinion, where do you think that perception originates? Why do you think people make that mistake? Because you're a living embodiment that contradicts that. You appeal to evidence for the positions that you take with regards to canonicity and things like that.

Where do you think that comes from in your estimation?

Well, I think it stems from many different things. One thing it stems from, as I hinted at, was that most presuppositionalists are not the ones doing the major historical work. And so you on the surface already think, well, they must not care.

And so there's already a inherent sense that they're not that interested. Secondly, some presuppositionalists have probably overstated their case a little bit and maybe make it sound like the only way to argue is argue in a presuppositional fashion that almost makes it look like evidence doesn't have a role.

And certain more strident versions of presuppositionalism can come off like that, and they're very nuanced. And then I think the third reason people misunderstand this is because presuppositionalists are often talking about the limitations of historical evidence, that just dumping the facts on somebody doesn't actually accomplish as much as we think it does, and that evidence requires a grid through which it's interpreted.

And this is ironic to say, because most people don't think of it this way, there's a certain subjectivism to historical evidences. People think it's the way to go objective. And presuppositionalists are saying, well, depends what you mean.

I mean, historical evidences can be very subjective, too, because it depends how you interpret the historical evidences. And so as soon as you start talking like that, people think, oh, well, they don't like historical evidences.

They think they're bad. They think if you use evidence, you're a bad Christian and that you should sort of repent of it. And they just don't understand the larger... So let's get this out of the way. So.

You're a presuppositionalist. You believe that Jesus was raised from the dead. You do acknowledge the truth of the Christian worldview as a system. Would you use historical arguments to demonstrate the resurrection of Jesus?

Let's just put the myth to bed. We'll hear from the man himself. Would you use historical evidence to establish the resurrection of Jesus?

Yeah, absolutely. I don't have any problem with that at all. Yeah, I know. Maybe a lightning bolt will come down from someone who's a presuppositionalist.

In heaven on high. Who's upset with my answer. Dr. Kruger, but if you appeal to historical evidence, aren't you putting God in the dock? Aren't you subjecting the God of all the universe to the independent reasoning of the natural man?

And these are the sorts of things that us presuppositionalists hear all the time. Yeah, well, of course. Yeah, well, I mean,.

This is where the rest of my discussion would have to come. I say, of course, I'll use historical evidences, but well, I think I lost you there. Am I back? You were here the whole time. Okay. I had a flicker on my screen.

I think a bolt of lightning actually just hit close to my house. There we go. Maybe there really was a bolt of lightning from heaven from some presuppositionalist. Sorry, my screen blanked and that's okay that you still have me.

So yeah, what I would round that out by saying is, of course, I use historical evidences, but I make a few caveats. One is, I think a lot of the historical evidences I would appeal to are actually warranted by scripture itself.

Why would I mention 500 eyewitnesses? Well, because the scripture mentions 500 eyewitnesses. Why would I mention the grave clothes or the empty tomb or any of the things that we typically appeal to or the fact that it was guarded by the Jewish leaders who wanted to make sure no one stole the body?

Why would I mention all these things? Well, those are historical evidences, but actually get them from the Bible. And so I would say there's an inherent circularity there that's inevitable. The second thing I would say is that as I use the historical evidences, I'm not pretending that I'm interpreting them neutrally.

In fact, I'm looking at the historical evidences through the larger Christian worldview. And so what will inevitably happen after I present the historical evidences to my non-Christian friend is that he won't accept them.

He'll find them unpersuasive. He says, well, they don't work for me. I'm not convinced. And then as soon as you start asking why he's not convinced, you're going to end up at worldview discussions. So eventually you're going to have to deal with worldview issues.

Eventually you're going to have to deal with larger, deeper epistemological commitments. But there's no rule that says you have to start with those things. Why not start with historical evidences and then work your way back to those things?

Here's what's amazing is some people will accept the historical evidences. And the reason they will is either A, the spirits at work already, or B, they're actually operating on a Christian system and don't realize it.

They're actually borrowing from the Christian worldview and thinking Christianly without actually recognizing they are. And so when they hear the evidences, it actually makes sense to them. And so what you realize is that evidences have a role, but they're not absolute.

They're not neutral. And they're not the kind of thing that you can look at as if worldviews don't matter. All right. Well, so let's go through.

Some questions here. And these are questions off the top of my head that I think people are interested in. With regards to the presuppositional method, oftentimes people speak of the certainty of God's existence, that it is transcendentally necessary that the triune God exists.

However, when you're dealing with historical evidences for the resurrection, when you're dealing with history, inevitably you're dealing with forms of induction and inferences that history by its very nature does not get you a kind of certainty that a lot of Christians speak about.

How would you kind of explain for us the relationship between the certainty that we have of the Christian worldview as a system and the non-certain nature of the historical method in general? How do we bring those things together if the knowledge of Jesus being raised from the dead comes through scripture, but as we're investigating scripture, the very nature of the investigation of history is that you don't work with certainties.

How would you tie those two together? Yeah. Well,.

I mean, I think you would make a distinction between the certainty of the Christian worldview and the certainty of individual arguments. Those aren't the same things. And in fact, you know, Van Til pointed this out, and others since have made this point, which is that even if Christianity is certain, it doesn't mean individual arguments themselves are equally certain as other individual arguments.

It doesn't mean that we have a sufficient amount of evidence for everything we believe in terms of an external corroboration of it, but that doesn't change the overall certainty of the Christian worldview.

And so, you know, part of the discussion is just making those kinds of nuances in the debate. You know, the other thing I would push back on here is what people mean by certainty. There's a certain level of certainty that people think you need in order to have knowledge.

And this is where I appreciate the work of Alvin Plantinga and some of the reformed epistemologists. You can have sufficient warrant for a belief without having absolute certainty over it. And I think people overplay the certainty card that my certainty has to be kind of infallible certainty before I can say I know something.

Well, we don't have the space here to reenter into all those discussions that Plantinga raises, but I think there's important nuances there. I don't have to have the kind of absolute sort of omniscient God-like certainty to know things.

I can have sufficient grounds for knowing that would count as knowledge, even if I don't have the kind of absolute certainty that rules out every other possibility. And so I think there is an overreach there.

And I think this is the favorite sort of card that skeptics like to play. They set a bar that no one can reach. It's like, no, unless you have sort of knock down, drag out, infallible, absolute, unassailable certainty about every aspect, well, then you can't know anything.

And of course, our pushback is, well, did you apply that same standard to everything you claim to know? And did you even apply that standard to your own methodology? I mean, it doesn't work. So it's undefeated in the end.

When you talk about not necessarily having to have that kind of certainty, would you say with regards to the existence of God, we have that kind of certainty if God is our ultimate foundation? It's something, and he's transcendentally necessary.

We'd say that that's one fact that we can't be wrong about, that the God of Scripture exists. But there are some other facts that we're not claiming absolute certainty with regards to. So, Ken, are you saying that from our perspective, thinking in presuppositional terms?

Well, I think, yeah, you're.

Thinking on two different levels here. In terms of the certainty of the Christian worldview, I think it's absolute. I mean, I think without it, we end up having an incoherent...

Such that you cannot be wrong about. Yeah, I mean, this is Bonson, you know,.

Impossibility of the contrary kind of argument. But from a historical perspective, we can still marshal evidences, and this is the pathway I was running down, that can still give us knowledge. And we can know certain things by not only using those historical evidences, but using them within the context of a Christian worldview that don't necessarily provide the kind of certainty that the skeptic is going to require.

But we would push back and say, why is that level of certainty necessary for us to say that we have knowledge?

Canon, Self-Authentication, and the Old Testament Apocrypha

Now, real quick, and I don't want to get too much on the certainty thing, because I do know that it is an interesting rabbit trail that gets into a whole other issue. But let's say if someone did push it.

If you're saying you know something, and we're defining knowledge, for example, as a justified true belief, we have a belief, we have justification for it, and it's true, all of the ingredients so that it counts for knowledge.

But if you have a belief that's true, it's actually true, then how could we not be certain in the sense that we can't be wrong about it if it's knowledge? So like, if there's a possibility that you're, if we're not, if we're not talking about like an epistemic certainty about it, then wouldn't it seem to follow that there's a chance that we could be wrong about it?

And then in which case is, is it really knowledge? So I guess that sounds a little confusing, like, how?

Yeah, there's, yeah, and this is a rabbit trail, and it depends what you mean by a lot of that. So for example, even, even with Plantinga's work, where he talks about warranted belief, it's only warranted and absent of defeaters.

And so even if you say you have, you know, epistemic grounds for what you say is true, there's still the next step of the work, which is, well, what about all the defeaters? So I've got to enter into defeater, defeaters.

And so, and so just because you have an epistemically warranted argument doesn't necessarily produce in itself knowledge, because it's, it's, it's, it's warranted absent defeaters that are valid. In fact, I've done this in my book, Canon Revisited, where the whole second half of my volume is actually on defeaters.

And, and, and what Plantinga calls defeater, defeaters. And, you know, I walked through the potential defeaters. So, so, so I hear what you're saying there. But there's also, you know, layers here that you peel back in terms of levels of certainty.

Okay, great. Well, folks, real quick, if you have any questions, Dr. Kruger is more than happy to take them throughout the discussion. If I see some questions coming in on the, the live chat, we can stop and take a few moments and have Dr. Kruger address those.

If not, we will keep on moving. I want to make this as applicable and useful for people as possible. And so the questions that I'm about to ask, I don't have a list of anything. I'm just kind of going off the top of my head based on questions that really just come up in popular discussion.

So within the scholarly realm, you probably don't hear a lot of the questions that I might be asking, but at least within the popular level, a lot of Christians have to deal with these sorts of questions.

And so I'm really interested to see how Dr. Kruger answers some of these. So let's jump into some questions. So Dr. Kruger, you are, you're, you know, you're out to Applebee's, you know, prior to quarantine, right?

And you are not engaging in social distancing and you're sitting at the table and you're having a really good conversation with a friend. And eventually you get onto the topic of religion. And someone says, you know, well, you know, I understand that you believe the Bible, but you know, I don't think there is any good reason to believe that the Bible is true.

I mean, how do you even know, you know, who wrote those books? Where'd they come from? How do you know that the Bible is the word of God? Now notice what I just asked Dr. Kruger. I just asked a bunch of questions in there very sloppily.

And I did that on purpose because that's how it's usually presented in a popular, you know, normal conversation. No one goes out like a premise one, premise 2 .1. How would you address that question that I just asked while sitting at the dinner.

Table or at an Applebee's or something like that? Yeah, well, I mean, at the core of it is it's an epistemological question. It's the how you know question. I mean, you did throw out numerous questions there, but the essence of it was, well, how do you know you have the right books?

You know, you Christians say you do, but we all know that you just kind of stumbled in the dark here is the implied answer. And so, you know, hidden behind the question is, is a challenge. Do you Christians have adequate grounds for how you know that it's this book and not that book?

I mean, what are those grounds? And the non-Christian will say, well, see, I don't see any grounds. I think you guys just say it's these books and you don't really know for sure. And it's that kind of epistemological question that I think is exactly why I wrote Canon Revisited and some other things I've written too, which is dealing with the question of how you know.

Now notice how you don't answer that question. You can't answer that question just by saying, well, you know, the Canon was formed and finalized in the fourth century and the Council of this, that, and the other, and everyone's like, well, okay, but you still haven't answered my question, right?

Which is why reception history, as interesting as it is in terms of canonical studies, is not going to answer that question, which is always what's frustrated me about most canonical studies. So what I've argued in my book and sitting in your hypothetical scenario in Applebee's, this would be hard to fully unpack, but I would say, well, actually, I think God has given us good grounds for knowing what books are from him.

And I think he's given us three different angles to look at. One is the self-authenticating qualities of the books themselves. And we'd have to unpack what that means. Secondly, the fact we have good grounds historically for thinking they come from the apostles.

And those are people who have the ability to speak for Christ as his mouthpiece and worth listening to. And then thirdly, we have the uniform testimony of the church over the centuries that would suggest that they responded to these books and recognize Christ's voice in them.

Now, at that point, you know, you're not Christian friends going to say, yeah, I'm not buying it. Well, okay. Then you got to peel back the layers. Well, what would you, what would you buy? What are you looking for here?

What is it that you think is going to be persuasive to you? And then now.

You're into the worldview discussion. Okay. Um, and I, I like how you're asking these questions and you're getting into the, you know, well, well, what would you, what would you, um, say is something that would be acceptable to you notice that this kind of language we're often criticized from our classical brothers, like, well, you know, presuppositional is don't engage in those kind of in-depth discussions, but it's all about, you know, worldviews in the broad sense, but you're right there, the way you've just addressed that specific issue, you're willing to engage in the conversation with the other person and get into some of the details.

There's nothing wrong with.

Asking. This is where, of course, I'm always confused by the characters of presuppositionalist not engaging in the conversation. I'm like, well, no, it's the presuppositionalists that are, that are actually asking the questions that unpack the non-Christian's worldview most aptly.

Cause usually presuppositionalists are looking to do a reductive ad absurdum on the non-Christian worldview. So we're, we're trying to learn more about their worldview. We want to know more about what makes a tick so we can show its inconsistencies.

And, you know, you know, think about Keller's book, Reason for God, which was so popular a number of years ago and still pretty popular. Most people don't know that he was just using presuppositional methodology in that book, talking about worldviews and so forth.

He doesn't use all the terminology that presuppositionalists sometimes use, which is to his credit. People didn't really pick up on it, but if they find that persuasive, that's presuppositionalism,.

But yet it still is very engaging. Yeah. Very good. All right. Well well, I don't know if I trust the Bible because, I mean, have you read the Bible, man? I mean, this is, you know, obviously you've read the Bible.

Have you read the Bible? It's filled with so much contradictions. I mean, I look at the resurrection accounts, you know, they're, they're completely and hopelessly contradictory. You have all these different things.

One author says one thing, another author says another, you know, why should we put our trust in a book written by, you know, sheep herders, you know, ignorant people from the Bronze Age, and they didn't even get all their facts straight.

How would you address that question to help folks listening out who maybe hear things like that?

Yeah. Well, again, you know, you piled a lot of questions into that one supposed question. There's like four or five in there. But, you know, the heart of it, I think, was this idea of contradictions, which is, well, you know, you've got one thing that says in one place and one another.

And of course, I hear this a lot. I'm sure you do. People bring it up a lot. You know, usually when I talk to someone, you know, if we're thinking about hypothetical scenarios, areas, I get in a lot of issues on airplanes with people, right?

So I'm on an airplane with somebody to ask you what I do, and pretty soon we're off and running about these sorts of things. And they'll often say, we know that, you know, what do you do with the fact that the Bible contradicts itself?

And here's my first response, usually, which is always interesting to see how people respond, is I ask them, so tell me that one contradiction you've really struggled with and studied and tried to solve and haven't been able to solve, and maybe I can help you with it.

Now, as soon as I ask that question, usually, not always, but usually the response is almost identical, which is, hey, I don't really have a particular example. I'm just saying it generally. Or secondly, even if I do, I haven't really studied it that much.

And what you realize is actually people aren't that interested in solving apparent contradictions. They just want to have them in their hip pocket to toss out for an easy, quick reason they don't trust the Bible.

And what I point out to them at that point is that don't think for a moment these supposed contradictions are catching anybody off guard, as if we've never seen these before. No one's ever thought about these before.

Even back in as early as the second century, you know, Salesforce was bringing up these sort of things to the early Christians, and early Christians have responded to these things. So there's been answers, good answers.

Scholars have explained these things. Part of the idea of a contradiction, particularly in the Gospels, is a misunderstanding of historical genres, what you expect, putting modern-day expectations on ancient historiography, and so on.

And we could talk about those sorts of things. But in essence, pressing them on their own worldview, their own lack of study and awareness, and most people just wouldn't even know where to begin.

Hmm. I'm going to try to simplify the question. You're familiar with this question, but I'm not going to try to layer the questions on. Again, I think that's a fun way to present some of the questions, because that's just the sloppiness of conversation.

You know, you're going to find yourself having to address a whole host of issues and knowing how to narrow it down to kind of the heart of what they're saying, which is basically what I just asked there with regard.

It was really the issue of contradictions and things like that. I think you nailed that, which I expected you to. But okay, so if someone were to ask you, how do you know that the Bible we hold in our hands is what was written by the supposedly the apparent original authors?

We don't have the originals. And if you appeal to early copies, you just have early copies. We don't know how far removed specifically those are from the originals. How do you deal with that question where we don't have the autographs?

So you really can't know for sure that what we have is the genuine article. That's an important question. I think people need to hear the answer to this.

Yeah, well, this is a different category, different topic, but it's still an important one. This is the field of textual criticism and textual transmission, which is often confused with canon, although they're related, they're not the same.

Canon is which books and text criticism is which text. So you're asking, well, how do I know that what I have in my hand is the text that was originally written by, say, Luke or Paul or whoever? And those are really important questions.

And what they raise, actually, is what I was bringing up a little while ago is an unattainable level of certainty that the skeptic expects us to have before we can affirm anything historically. And the perfect example of this sort of setting up a fault standard that no one could ever possibly meet is Bart Ehrman, who's spent his whole career using text criticism as a reason to go after the Bible.

And he did this, of course, in misquoting Jesus most famously, but he's done it his whole career. And Ehrman basically sets up this exact dynamic. Well, if you don't have the autographs, then we're done.

If you don't have the autographs, you are not going to have a conversation because you can't know with absolutely 100 percent infallible certainty without any shadow of a doubt that the text you're reading in the second century is the text that was written in the first century.

And on one level, he's right. If you're looking at just the text critical data, we can't know what the kind of certainty he's setting up. But why is that the standard? We don't use that standard for any other types of historical discussions.

And we have actually excellent grounds for thinking the text has been stable prior to as far back as we can get into it. And we can talk about that in this conversation if you want to. We can get into grounds for thinking textual stability was part of the early Christian ethos and so on.

But the point of the matter is, is that we do have access to the text at an early time, as early as the second century. The text was written probably in the first century and up to the end of the first century.