54 - Preservation and Canonicity

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March 11, 2021

Striving for Eternity Academy's School of Systematic Theology This is a class in the SFE School of Systematic Theology. This lesson covered the topic of the doctrine of canon and how we recognized the New Testament as Scripture.

55 - The Apocrypha

00:23: Welcome to the
00:31: Striving for Eternity Academy's School of Systematic Theology. We're glad to have you with us with yet another lesson in our
00:39: School of Systematic Theology. We are going through basically our theology in four different sections.
00:48: And in this section, this is our third book that we're using, and book number three we're calling
00:53: God Speaks to the World, and it is specifically what's known as the Doctrine of the
01:00: Bible. Sometimes you'll hear this referred to as Bibliology, okay,
01:05: Bible, Biblio, Ology, Study of, so the Study of the Bible. This is a good lesson to, or actually a good book that you could start if you're starting your systematic theology.
01:19: We said this a couple times, but there's two places you want to start any study of systematic theology.
01:25: Either one is fine. We started with the attributes of God. We chose to do that because we wanted to lay a foundation of who
01:33: God is, because the rest of theology is based on that. It is also that some of the information in these lessons on Bibliology get, shall we say, a little bit heady sometimes.
01:47: There's some areas where we have to do a little bit more explanation. And so for that reason, we chose to start with the attributes of God and who
01:56: God is. But you could start with this Doctrine of the Bible and go through that as the beginning.
02:02: One reason some people start there is, well, basically you're going to use the
02:08: Bible for all of your theology. So start with understanding what the Bible is about and then move on.
02:15: But we did go in. We had lessons when we went through our classes on Harmoneutics and that was a good start.
02:23: So we do welcome you with us if you are here for the first time. We encourage you to grab a syllabus.
02:29: If you have a syllabus, you can get a syllabus at our store. Just go to strivingforeternity .org.
02:36: The syllabuses are kind of priced. We keep them all the same size. I think they're each about $25 apiece.
02:44: So you could just buy the syllabus. We are in lesson number four.
02:50: We're in lesson number four. Lesson number four is going to be going into what's called Preservation and Kinesthetic.
02:58: So this is going to be the study of what's called the Canon. Now as we get into this, the doctrine of Preservation involves primarily two different areas of study as it relates to the
03:15: Bible. One is Canonicity, which is what we're going to look at this week, and that's your first blank in your syllabus,
03:20: Canonicity. The second is Translation, Translation.
03:26: We're going to look at Translation in lesson number six. So this lesson is going to kind of cover Preservation in general and really focus in on the
03:35: Canon, how we got the books that we claim are the Bible. How were they determined?
03:41: What makes them books of the Bible and not other books? And then lesson six, we're going to discuss how the
03:49: Bible got transmitted and translated to us today.
03:56: And there's a big raging debate on that in our culture, so we're going to put that in a separate lesson.
04:02: It'll probably take two weeks to do that, all right? So let's start with Preservation.
04:08: We're going to start with Preservation. Now in this, we're not going to be going through as many
04:15: Bible passages in this because a lot of this is going to be explanation for things.
04:21: We're going to see this actually throughout this study, the study of the Bible. The Bible does have things to say about the
04:27: Bible, but there's some things like this. We're going to talk about history, and that's why we say we want to start with the attributes of God and leave these lessons for later on when you're in this class a little bit longer as you have been if you started with lesson one.
04:42: We're in lesson 54, so you're a whole year's worth of weeks of lessons into the class if you've been watching from the beginning.
04:51: Now let me quote from a document that talks about Preservation, and this may shock some of you.
04:59: It made me give some of my Presbyterian friends out there great joy to hear me quoting this
05:06: Baptist preacher quoting from the Westminster Confession. That's right,
05:12: I'm going to quote from the Westminster Confession. This is what the Westminster Confession states on their statement on Preservation.
05:21: It says, quote, The Old Testament in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek being immediately inspired by God and by His singular care and providence kept pure in all ages and therefore, uh, and therefore, uh, authentical so in all controversies of religion the church is to finally appeal to them.
05:55: I'm going to actually have to correct the Westminster Confession because the
06:01: Bible in the Old Testament was written in Hebrew and parts of Daniel are in Aramaic, so we'll just add that phrasing in.
06:08: I mean, not that the Westminster Confession wouldn't be wrong in areas like, say,
06:13: Baptism, oh no, but the Westminster Confession is actually a really, really good document in a lot of areas.
06:20: But, uh, that would, we would look at this and say that this is a very good explanation that the
06:28: Old and New Testaments were immediately inspired by God when they were written. Okay, we're going to look into that more.
06:35: And that they're pure for all ages, alright, therefore, they are an authority, okay, they answer all the questions regarding religion, the church, life, practice, faith, alright.
06:48: So the preserving work of God refers to his providential care, that's your blank there, providential care through the work of men.
06:58: The importance of this is this is in the area of God's providence. This isn't
07:03: God determining and forcing morally free agents, in other words, people that have a will to choose between two different things.
07:15: God works within that. He doesn't force us to make, he doesn't force every single decision and just fool us into thinking it's ourselves.
07:25: That's the doctrine of providence, covers that, but this is saying that God worked through men to keep his word pure.
07:33: Now, scripture does teach this, so let's look. If you look at letter B, the scriptural teaching of perseverance, duh, preservation.
07:43: God has promised through his word that the scripture would be preserved. Let's take a look at, first off,
07:51: Psalm 119. Psalm 119 is the longest psalm in the Bible and it is focused all on the word of God.
08:00: So let's start with two verses here in Psalm 119. We will start with verse 89 and then verse 54.
08:14: So, forever, O Lord, your word is firmly fixed in heaven.
08:19: In other words, God's word is something that was set from heaven, not from man.
08:26: Verse 154 says, plead my cause and redeem me, give me life according to your promise.
08:35: Okay, so this is, it's God's promise that the psalmist is trusting in, not man's word.
08:45: We already read that one. How about we go to the next one? Here we go. All right. In Isaiah 40 verse 8, the grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of God will stand forever.
09:00: We have in Matthew 5, for truly
09:06: I say to you until the heavens and earth pass away, not one iota, not a dot, the iota is the smallest letter in Greek and the dot is the, is referring to like the dot on an eye.
09:21: So it's not, not even the smallest letter like an eye or even the dot on an eye. Iota would sometimes, you could think of the iota being the difference between an
09:29: E and a capital E and a capital F, that little mark that would make the difference.
09:34: Now in, so it's the, not even the smallest letter or the smallest mark that differentiates between two letters will pass away from the law until all is accomplished.
09:47: So you see that his word is not going to pass away. Matthew 4, the great crowds followed from Galilee and Diapolos and from Jerusalem and Judea and from beyond the
10:07: Jordan and that would be a verse that I don't know, I have that one wrong. We'll have to look up and get you the right one in a corrected, correct that in later syllabuses.
10:20: So sorry about that. Let's go to Luke 16 then. So with that we have, and he said, then
10:29: I beg you father to send them to my house. This actually should include the context here, the next couple of verses, but if you keep going in Luke, he says that to send, that this is dealing with God's, Jesus is telling the story of the rich or a parable of the rich man and Lazarus and he says, the rich man says send someone back from the dead, send
10:57: Lazarus back from the dead and my brothers will believe and Jesus says they have basically the
11:04: Old Testament believe that. That's the authoritative. Let's go on to 1
11:11: Peter then. Alright, this 1 Peter 2, when he was reviled he did not revile in return.
11:21: When he suffered he did not threaten to continue, but continued entrusting himself to him whom judges justly, in him who bore our sin to his body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness, but his wounds you have been healed for you were straying like sheep but have now returned to the shepherd, the overseer of my soul.
11:57: So, I am starting to wonder, yeah, I'm given a couple of passages here, maybe
12:03: I didn't give full context to, maybe we should have given some further ones, but basically the idea here is he's trusting in God's word with this, but the idea there is he saw, especially within the
12:19: Psalms, that the scripture says God's word will never pass away, it's going to be, and it is the thing that we're trusting.
12:28: When Jesus says to the rich man, he's like, you have the Old Testament, you can trust that that is
12:35: God's word. That's many years, at least, at minimum 400 years after the
12:43: Old Testament was being written. The importance of that is to say that Jesus trusted the
12:51: Old Testament, and when he says in that passage in Luke 16 that they have
12:57: Moses and the prophets, Moses was one of the earliest writings of the Old Testament, so the prophets being the latest, so basically it's all encompassing.
13:06: Jesus is saying you can trust anything from Moses to Malachi, because the whole thing is from God, it's authoritative, it's not being handed down from men.
13:18: That's the importance there, that it would be preserved. Second is that God has left men with the responsibility, that's your blank there, responsibility to safeguard his word.
13:32: The responsibility to safeguard his word. Let's go to the Old Testament first in Deuteronomy, there we go, in Deuteronomy 12, everything that I command you, you shall be careful to do, you shall not add to it or take away from it.
13:55: This is speaking of God's word, don't add to it, don't take away from it, it's God's word. We can look actually earlier in Deuteronomy 4, chapter 4, you shall not add to the word that I command you, nor take away from it, you shall keep the commandments of the
14:12: Lord, you shall not add to the word that I command you, nor take away from it, that you may keep the commandments of the
14:33: Lord, your God, that I command you. Let's go to Proverbs, I'm having a tough time speaking today, huh?
14:40: Do not add to this his words, lest he rebuke you and you be found a liar.
14:48: Ooh, that's pretty severe. How about we go to Jeremiah, thank you, thus says the
14:56: Lord, stand in the court of the Lord's house and speak to all the cities of Judah that come to worship in the house of the
15:06: Lord. All the words that I command you to speak to them, do not hold back a word.
15:15: Notice, don't hold anything back from what God has revealed. Let's look at one more, this is in Revelation, chapter 22, the end of the book of Revelation and the end of the
15:31: Bible. I warn everyone who hears the words of this prophecy of this book, if anyone adds to them,
15:37: God will add to them the plagues described in this book. Ooh, that's pretty serious. And if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy,
15:49: God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.
15:56: That's serious. So what we see, the fact that God warned and commanded men about the purity of his word indicates that there's some responsibility that men have in the preserving work.
16:19: Because of these truths that we're looking at, because God is the one who's going to preserve his word and because of the fact that he's saying in there that not only is he going to be preserving it, but he's talking about the fact that he's going to keep his word, that's his word.
16:37: We can trust the truths taught here that modern day Christians can be fully confident that what we hold in our hand is
16:47: God's preserved word. And people say, oh, but you don't know. There's been translations and copies and all that.
16:56: We're going to get to that in lesson six. But we can rest assured that God said he's going to keep his word.
17:01: And even by the time of Jesus, which is hundreds, even thousand years, you know, some writings close to 1 ,500 years before Jesus' time, and Jesus says you can trust it.
17:18: It's authoritative. He quotes it as authoritative. He doesn't say where we can interpret it properly.
17:25: It's God's word. No. We don't need a bunch of men to interpret the word of God for us. That's actually, if you remember the lessons on the
17:32: Holy Spirit, that's the Holy Spirit's job. That's the new covenant. What he does for us is he indwells us. But let us now look at the issue of canonicity.
17:43: How did the scriptures come to be limited to the books that we now have? This is the issue of canonicity.
17:51: So let's start, it's always good to start with a definition. Very good.
17:57: So let us define canonicity. So we're going to define canonicity as, the word comes from the word canon, all right?
18:07: Canon in Greek means a rod of measurement, a rod for measuring. That's what the word means, okay?
18:15: So when we look at the word canon, it is a measuring rod.
18:22: So in reference to the scriptures, the word describes the scriptures as a measure for doctrine, for practice, for life of the church.
18:33: It is the idea that the canon is what measures the books. So you measure the books by this canon.
18:41: You can measure life by the canon. But these books are the ones that are measured up to be scripture, okay?
18:49: There's going to be some things when we deal with the development of it that get into issues. But let's start with what are the determiners.
18:56: What are the determiners? What determines the canon? Okay, that's what this is about.
19:07: So the Old Testament leaves us with really no issues over what books are authoritative, which ones are in or out of the
19:14: Bible. During the first century, the church recognized the 39 books that are presently in our
19:20: Bibles of the Old Testament. And they've been accepted by Judaism even as late as the council in 70
19:30: AD in Jamnia. This is a Jewish rabbi's council, and they all accepted the books that we have today in the
19:37: Old Testament as scripture. And by the way, they rejected books that the
19:42: Catholics accept. And we're going to look at those in another lesson, all right? That's going to be in a future lesson that we're going to look at that.
19:50: But actually, next lesson. So really what we want to deal with is the
19:56: New Testament. That's where a lot of debate is. So let's deal with what were the criteria for the New Testament.
20:03: There's basically four different rules for determining which books, which writings were said to be canonical.
20:11: In other words, they were the canon. They were part of the canon. They were that measuring rod. One is that the writings had to be apostolic.
20:19: Apostolic. That's your blank there. Apostolic in origin. Now this doesn't necessarily mean they had to be written by an apostle.
20:26: This is a collaborating test, but not a final test.
20:32: That's your blank there, final test. So in other words, this is saying that the work would have to be at least influenced, if not written by a apostle.
20:43: Now it could be dictated. Paul didn't write many of the letters. He dictated them. But you could look at something like Mark.
20:50: Many people think that Mark is actually, the information is from Peter and that Mark got his information from Peter.
20:58: Luke does a lot of research and his works was heavily influenced by Paul. But then you have
21:04: John and Matthew who write. So it is, if not from an apostle, it at least had to be strongly influenced by an apostle.
21:13: Now we will get to the fact that there were many forgeries in the names of apostles and that's why they had these people that would write, even some long after someone was dead, they would basically say that, you know, a gospel written by someone who was dead by the time that the thing was written.
21:32: Some of the ways we know that is we know when some of these people died. We also then see later that, you know, they make references in the writings of something that happened after the person died.
21:44: That would be a clear way to know that, yeah, that didn't happen, right? So when we look at this, it's not a final test.
21:53: Because why is it not a final test? Because we have some books like Hebrews which we don't know who the author is but it seems to be influenced.
22:00: Many think it was Barnabas influenced by Paul. But there seems to be a strong influence by Paul on it but we don't know who the author is.
22:08: So if this was a final test then a book like Hebrews would have to be tossed out. And we're going to look at that a little later.
22:14: That was one of the issues people had with Hebrews. Number two is the writings had to be accepted by the early church community.
22:22: We're going to look at that in a few moments. But it had to be accepted. In other words, it didn't take years for them to accept it.
22:28: When it was written, the early church accepted it as scripture. We're going to see examples of that.
22:36: Number three, the writing must demonstrate inspiration. Inspiration, that's your blank.
22:41: The blank in number two is accepted if I didn't say that. The writings must be accepted by the early church.
22:47: Number three, the writings must demonstrate inspiration. This is the true test of canonicity.
22:54: So this is a final test. To determine this, whether it's inspiration or not, three arguments had to be met.
23:05: Because this is a final test so this is an important one. Here are the three arguments that had to be met to be canon.
23:12: One, or letter A there, it must focus on the work, the person and work of Christ.
23:19: That's your blank there. Had to, must focus on the person and work of Christ. Letter B, must be unique.
23:27: That's your blank. Must be unique, either in precision of history, the depth of instruction, or degree of concentration on Jesus Christ.
23:38: So the Gospels all have a concentration on Christ. Much of what Paul writes or Hebrews is pretty deep in instruction.
23:47: Some books have, like Hebrews, has a great depth of history. So when you look at that, those are, it had to be unique in those ways.
23:58: And letter C there, the third determining factor for inspiration was, it must be consistent, that's your blank there, consistent in context with the whole.
24:09: With no other explanation as to why so much of Jesus' life survived all these years, it must be something about all the literature written about him, specifically the works that we call the canon.
24:25: Now, with this idea of consistency, we have to keep in mind, this is where many of the Gnostic Gospels fall short, because they require you to have to accept contradictions.
24:37: And that would be the thing, it can't contradict. So if it has a clear contradiction, it wasn't accepted as inspiration, it wasn't accepted as from God, because God cannot lie.
24:49: It's one of the arguments I make with people that study the Quran. The Quran has actual contradictions, not seeming contradictions as people try to make with the
24:56: Bible, but actual contradictions, like when it says that Christianity teaches that we worship Mary.
25:03: And it's speaking in the context of, in Surah chapter 5, of the Trinity, Christian Trinity, as if it's father, mother, son, and that's not the
25:11: Trinity. We don't worship Mary. Even Catholics who worship Mary, but they don't say she's
25:17: God, they may come pretty close, but they would say that's wrong. Number four, okay, to these determining rules for canon, not inspiration, but canon, the writings must produce a positive moral and spiritual, those are your blanks, moral and spiritual effect on the readers.
25:40: I mean, just look at the effects of, say, the Quran or Das Kapital on their respective readers.
25:48: Not a very good one. It leads to bloodshed. And I understand many will say
25:53: Christianity led to bloodshed. No, the Catholic Church led to bloodshed when it was politicized, okay?
26:00: But the Bible, when you read through the Bible, it doesn't lead people to bloodshed.
26:06: It leads people to grace and mercy and forgiveness, all right? There has not been a substantial attempt to change the canon since we've seen it in AD 397 at the
26:21: Council of Carsonage. Now, some will argue, well, what about Martin Luther? Martin Luther did have issues that he thought, and a lot of it because of his, he was so influenced by Roman Catholicism that when he questioned the book of James, it was because he could not wrap his head around, he wrapped his head around the
26:39: Roman Catholic teaching on James of salvation by works. And because of that, he saw a contradiction, an inconsistency.
26:48: And he said, therefore, it can't be inspired. That's why he had an issue with it. But had he understood
26:55: James to not be speaking of regeneration but sanctification, then we don't have a problem.
27:02: There's no inconsistency. Actually, then it's very consistent. Let's go to our last of our
27:08: D's there. We literate. We have, you know, definition, determiners, and development.
27:14: Nope, that's determiners. Where's the one for? Oh, okay. Thank you. I made a boo -boo.
27:19: I don't have one for. That was just the last one. All right. I didn't create a slide for development.
27:27: We did talk about the Bible leads us to forgiveness. We forgive one another.
27:36: Okay. So, in the development, it is important to recognize that the role of the
27:42: Church in formulating the canon was discovery, not determining.
27:48: That's important. Those are your blanks. Let me read that again. It is important to recognize that the role of the
27:53: Church, because many argue the Church gave us the Bible, what was the role of the
27:58: Roman Catholic Church in formating the canon? It was discovery, not determination.
28:05: What would constitute the New Testament? That is why the canon is a collection of authoritative writings and not an authoritative collection of writings.
28:18: Do you understand the difference? So, the Roman Catholic Church would say that they gave us God's Word, they determined it, and therefore, the collection of writings, it's an authoritative collection of writings.
28:31: The authority being on the collection, the process, and not being on the writings themselves, we would say that it is a discovery.
28:41: God, when He gave that writing, it was the canon. The Church had to discover which ones were the canon.
28:51: In other words, which ones God said were the canon. All right? So, it was discovery, and that makes the writings the authority, not the process.
29:02: All right? Let's see. I really want to see if I can get through this lesson. We've got a lot more to go, but that's really the big difference.
29:08: I know people make that argument a lot over, well, the Church gave us
29:14: God's Word. It was not the Church. The Church discovered it. God's Word was
29:20: God's Word. All right? So, if you have your syllabus, below is a survey of some of the early
29:27: Church's discovery of what we know as the New Testament. All right? So, you're going to see that we did not get the first list of the canon in 397.
29:38: We have it earlier than that. So, first, we have New Testament recognition. That's the most important, so let's look there.
29:45: The first one is in 1 Corinthians 14. So, 1
29:53: Corinthians 14, what you're going to see is Paul recognized that what he wrote was authoritative.
30:00: Look at that here. If anyone thinks that he is a prophet or spiritual, he should acknowledge that the things
30:11: I am writing to you are a commandment of the Lord. So, when he's writing, he's saying that is from God.
30:20: Yeah. So, he's basically saying this is Scripture. Now, let's look at the next one, 1
30:27: Timothy 5, 18. The second half of this verse that you see there is going to be a quote, a reference to the
30:36: Gospel of Luke, Luke 10, 7. And it classifies this as Scripture.
30:42: It says, For the Scripture says, You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain.
30:47: That is an Old Testament reference. But then it says, And the laborer deserves his wages.
30:54: That is from Luke 10, 7. So, Paul is putting both of those together and he's saying that Luke's writing his
31:02: Scripture in the Gospel. Another, so let's look at that verse,
31:07: Luke 10, 7 says, And remain in the same house, eating and drinking that which they provide.
31:16: For the laborer deserves his wages. See how he says that? And Paul says that's Scripture. Let's move on to 2
31:21: Peter. 2 Peter 15 and 16, Paul, Peter, excuse me, identifies
31:28: Paul's writings as Scripture. Says, And count the patience of the
31:37: Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters, when he speaks of them in this manner.
31:51: These are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction as they do the other.
32:03: What's that? Scriptures. So, he's saying that the other, meaning Paul's writings are
32:09: Scripture. Revelation 22 verses 18 and 19.
32:17: Here we see that John understood that his writing of Revelation was an authoritative book not to be tampered with by men, that it possibly is a reference even to the entirety of Scripture.
32:29: All right, so it says, I warn everyone who hears the words of prophecy of this book, if anyone adds to them,
32:36: God will add to the plagues described in this book. And if anyone takes from the words of this book of the prophecy,
32:43: God will take away his share of the tree of life in the holy city, which is described in this book.
32:48: Now, some take this to say, well, this is something that we see that's for the whole
32:55: Bible, if you add to the Bible. But we do see similar phrasing as we already saw, all right, in Deuteronomy, in Proverbs about not adding to the
33:04: Scripture and yet more was added. So, we have to take it in its context, say that it could be referring to adding man's word to God's word.
33:14: That's a definite. When you add your own word and claim it's God's word, that's the issue that it's being addressed there.
33:21: If God wants to continue writing, He can. Maybe He will in the next phase, maybe during the millennium.
33:28: When He's living on earth and reigning as King, He won't need to write it down maybe.
33:34: Oops, did I just tip my hat to my views of end times? We'll get there eventually, don't worry. All right, let's move on because we've got to go quick now.
33:41: So, I'm going to give you a quick survey of history, but that's the important part of this lesson is to see that historically, or sorry, scripturally, the
33:49: New Testament was accepted as Scripture. All right, so the first time that we see a list of the canonical books is in 140
33:56: AD with the canon of Marcion. Now, appealing to a desire of the early
34:02: Christians for limitations on the canon, Marcion published the first one.
34:10: Now, it was Luke plus 10 other of Paul's epistles. Unfortunately, Marcion was a heretic and he forced the church though to begin to tackle the issue of what were the authoritative writings and what were not.
34:26: Marcion had a very limited list in his list, just 11 books, and that was it.
34:35: And so, that became the thing where the early church said, we need to address this. And you'll find in history, that's often how things got addressed.
34:42: You'd have some heretic say something, the church had to respond with the truth. That's where they start digging in and doing the research and the study to say, we need to have a stated position.
34:53: See, before this time, the books that we know as the canon were just accepted as the
35:01: Bible, as part of God's Word. And it wasn't until men like Marcion come up and say, no, it's just these 11 books that all of a sudden the church would say, all right, we need a way of determining this and they appeal to the list that we gave earlier.
35:16: We also see in 303 AD, under the persecution of Dalishnish, that because of his desire to be worshipped as the only
35:28: God, this Roman emperor, Diocletian ordered all sacred writings to be destroyed.
35:37: This, once again, forced the church to determine which things were sacred and which ones were not.
35:44: So, what was the sacred and authoritative? Then we see Constantine.
35:49: When Constantine legalized, quote unquote, Christianity in 313,
35:58: I mean, he just declares everyone's a Christian, we're now a Christian nation, right? All of a sudden, a church historian,
36:07: Eubiditus, was asked to produce 50 copies of the
36:12: New Testament. Well, that makes it an issue. What exactly is the New Testament then, right?
36:18: Well, he needed to figure that out. So, further acknowledging the need to identify the authoritative
36:26: Christian writings, he divided all the books that were being discussed at the time that were purported to have some aspect of apostolic authority into four categories.
36:43: Universally accepted was the first category. These included 20 of the 27 books we presently have.
36:50: That's your blank there. 20 of 27. There were some that he said in his second category were disputed books and here's what the disputes were and why.
37:00: Hebrews was disputed because of its authorship. No one knew who the author was and because of that, it was disputed for that purpose.
37:09: James, because of its lack of a salvation message. It focuses on sanctification, not regeneration.
37:17: So, because of that, he was kind of struggling with that. As I said earlier, Luther struggled for a different reason with James.
37:24: 2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John, and Revelation were not included because of content.
37:31: Again, those are books, the first three, 2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John are dealing with addressing some heresies of Gnosticism and so some of that may have been why it wasn't included is they didn't understand some of the content.
37:49: But Revelation being just very different than all the other books. Jude, because of authorship and some content.
37:56: Jude is another book that addresses arguments being made against false teachers, falsehood.
38:02: But Jude not being an apostle brought that into issue. Remember I said that's not a final test though.
38:10: The inspiration is the final test but Jude not being directly from the apostles was what he had to issue with that.
38:19: The third area, third category was spurious books. These were books that were written by the early church but without content or apostolic authority.
38:31: These are things like Shepherd of Harmis, the Didache, Epistle of Barnabas, fine books.
38:38: Especially the Didache, a very, very useful book because it's kind of like a handbook on Christian living of the early church.
38:45: It explains a lot of the practice of the early church. Good historical book that we're going to use and study to understand the times but it isn't scripture.
38:54: Then there were heretical books, books that he just deemed heretical. Though these were touted authorships from many of the writers of scripture, they were in fact forgeries.
39:05: You have different books that were claimed to be written by different writers of the
39:10: Bible, different apostles and yet, as I mentioned earlier, they're seen to be as forgeries.
39:18: And so he rejected those outright. Now notice, out of what we have, 20 of the 27 books have universally been accepted always.
39:30: It was only when they came up with this canon, how we're going to determine the canon, that seven of the books, we're really not sure by this listing because it's either the content or the author.
39:43: Notice none of them were over, hey, is it inspired? When you get to the ones of consistency, well,
39:51: Epistle of Barnabas, The Shepherd of Hermes, those are tossed out because they have contradictions, inconsistencies.
39:59: That's a final test. So these books, these heretical books were those origins said to be disputed among church men in 250
40:11: AD. Okay, other Christians in Alexandria and he interpreted the
40:19: Bible allegorically and typically rather than literally. So there were other
40:24: Christians in Alexandria that took some of these heretical books as allegories of the
40:30: Bible and not literal. And this led to Origen and others towards some very strange doctrines such as, you know, unpurging souls being, unpurged souls being brought back to earth in different bodies.
40:46: Okay, so you had people, you know, early forms of reincarnation maybe, zombies, no.
40:55: But you have some strange doctrines when they would go to these heretical books and look at these books and start trying to see these allegories and try to take them literal.
41:06: It caused all kinds of problems. But then we also have in 365 AD, Athanasius and his fistul letter, in this letter, and in Gnaeus, Athanasius, a church leader, limited the
41:26: New Testament to 27 books, the ones that we have now, and forbid the
41:32: Didache and the Shepherd of Hermes as authoritative writings. Notice that that's before 397 and the
41:42: Council of Carthage, all right? Now, we have to understand something about this.
41:48: Let's read from the council. The council formatted this following statement, nothing except the canonical scripture to be read in the church under the name divine scripture.
42:02: Okay, so only that which is canonical can be read and stated as divine scripture.
42:08: Let's go on in this quote now. Of the New Testament, the four gospels, Acts, 13 epistles of St.
42:15: Paul, the epistle of the same to Hebrews, Peter 2,
42:23: John 3, James, Jude, and Apocalypse. It wasn't called Revelation, it was called
42:28: Apocalypse. And so you see in the council at 397 is the final list.
42:34: But notice that that's the final time and it hasn't been disputed really since then other than a few times like with Luther, but that's really it.
42:43: And so people say, ah, the church gave us that council, these books in the
42:48: Council of Carthage. Athanasius gave it to us 30 years prior, 32 years to be more precise.
42:56: So what you have is that the church didn't determine the canon, the church discovered what
43:04: God already determined as the canon. All right, so this is the canon. Now, I've been mentioning a couple times some of these books.
43:12: In the next lesson, we're going to look at what's called the Apocrypha. Okay, we're going to look at these books that the
43:20: Roman Catholics accept and call doctrine. We're going to look at why they do that. That's going to be in the next lesson in Lesson 5.
43:26: But if you have any questions about this lesson or any of the others, feel free to email us at academyatstrivingforeternity .org,
43:34: academyatstrivingforeternity .org. You can go to our store, store .strivingforeternity .org,
43:41: store .strivingforeternity .org, and pick up the syllabus if you want to pick up one of those.
43:47: Priced at about $25 each, you can pick those up. Another way, also, if you're going to be doing shopping, you can support us, as long as they have it, with Amazon Smiles.
44:01: It costs you nothing to do. Just go and register. Go to smile .amazon .com, search for Striving for Eternity Ministries, add us as your ministry, your charity, and they will give half a percent of everything you buy to our ministry to help us.
44:19: We just got done with the Ohio Fire, and now we're moving right into the next one, the
44:29: Jersey Fire. So if you can make it out to Jersey, jerseyfire .org.
44:35: Jersey Fire 2015 is going to be on July 10th and 11th.
44:40: We'll have the pre -conference on the 9th, where we'll go out to the boardwalk on Thursday the 9th, and then we'll have a special pre -conference with the folks from Hearts from the
44:48: Lost on Friday afternoon. But we're going to have Dan Phillips. I'm excited to get to meet him.
44:55: He is a writer. We used to write with Phil Johnson on Pyromania, but Phil no longer writes for Pyromaniacs.
45:05: We're going to have Carl Kirby Jr. We're going to have myself and Michael Coghlan.
45:11: We're going to be talking on the topic of discipleship. Discipleship, and that's going to be the theme.
45:17: We really, really, really hope that you'll come out. Registration is open. You want to register early because we, about a month out, we're cut off the free t -shirts.
45:28: You will get free t -shirts if you register. Oh, by the way, I should mention, if it's not up live at this point, it will be as the new website, strivingforattorney .org.
45:37: Total new look. Really, really cool. So you'll have to play around and find, oh, where's that paper
45:44: I always loved or that, you know, that audio I want to listen to over and over and share with others. You got to go find that again because we changed everything around.
45:53: Keep you on the website checking it out, but just a little bit easier navigation. But hopefully we will have on there our new seminar,
46:02: Bible Interpretation Made Easy. We are encouraging you to invite us out to your church that we might come to your church and do one of these
46:09: Bible Interpretation Made Easy seminars. Really cool seminars where you teach you basically our
46:15: School of Biblical Harmonetics. We compact it down to eight hours, six sessions on a
46:22: Friday, Saturday night, teaching your church how to interpret God's Word.
46:28: It's one of the biggest areas of stumbling in Christianity today is that people don't know how to rightly handle
46:35: God's Word. And then lastly is our Brother of Encouragement. This is a brother you're going to need to encourage this week because he's been really busy.
46:45: He's just, he's coming back from a pastor's conference where he was speaking and he's doing a detour. Instead of going home to be with his wife,
46:55: Brother Frank Mollis is actually coming to New Jersey to spend some time with me for my birthday.
47:02: And we're going to have a lot of fun. We're going to do some stuff, but we're really going to just try and spend a lot of time relaxing in God's Word.
47:10: And just a time he's been through a lot. He and his family, especially his wife Rosalyn, you could find them on Facebook.
47:19: Frank Mollis can really use your prayers. Their family is going through a lot right now.
47:25: Rosalyn's brother is in, just really struggling. Not a believer.
47:30: He's in some trouble with the law. He's been a real struggle for the family. And she's been having to travel to be with her brother and family and take care of things.
47:41: And that's leaving Frank to have to not only pastor a church, but raise the family and take care of them.
47:48: It's just been a really busy, difficult time for that family. They need your encouragement. Maybe they'll share some of the details of what they're going through, but they are a great family.
48:00: I've gotten to know them a little. When I went down to Georgia, did the Bible Interpretation Made Easy Seminar at Pastor Frank's church.
48:08: But really love this couple. Really sweet. Just very, I mean, just type that should open themselves up to everyone.
48:17: Really, really humble type of individual. Both he and his wife.
48:22: I love his daughters. They're great. But just really encourage him because,
48:28: I mean, if he's coming to see me, you know he needs the encouragement because that's just like crazy.
48:34: Why would you do that? But yeah, so encourage him this week.
48:41: And when the website is live, I'm not sure if it's live, but we will have a new book out there.
48:52: I don't have a slide. I didn't make a slide yet. For next week, I'll put the slide up. You can get a new book at the
48:58: Striving for Eternity store. Do I have it here? I don't. I don't even have my own book here. Wow, that's bad.
49:05: What They Believe. It's a brand new book. It's a book that I've written. It's a systematic theology of the major Western religions.
49:13: Not going into their foundations and how to rip them, you know, at their foundation, but it's really about what they actually believe from their books, from their system of thought.
49:24: What it is that they teach. It's really helpful because what it is, it's giving you from their documents, their authoritative documents, what it is they believe.
49:36: And so you can get What Do They Believe? written by me at strivingforeturning .org.
49:42: I'm not sure if it's on Amazon. It's going on Amazon. The Kindle version will be up. I just don't know if it's up yet, but that's coming up.
49:48: And then they'll also have the paperback version. Until next week, remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.