April 8, 2016 Show with Dr. Charles Hill on “How Do We Know the Bible Is God’s Word? Recovering the Doctrine of a Self-Authenticating Scripture” PLUS “Hidden Gospels: Our Culture’s Quest to Rewrite the Story of Jesus”

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Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arnson, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Friday on this eighth day of April, 2016, and we do have as a guest for the very first time ever on Iron Sharpens Iron, Dr. Charles Hill, who joined the Reformed Theological Seminary's Orlando campus in 1994 and serves as the John R. Richardson Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity.

He teaches courses on Hebrews, Revelation, and New Testament Greek. After receiving his Ph .D. from Cambridge University, Dr. Hill taught at Northwestern College in Iowa. Dr. Hill has significant research interest in the Johannine corpus, New Testament books associated with the Apostle John, the Gospel of John, the first through third John, and Revelation.

He has also had, he has also researched and written extensively on several issues related to the early church fathers, particularly early Christian views of the end times, the canon of the New Testament, and the traditions of New Testament manuscripts.

Dr. Hill's most recent publications include Who Chose the Gospels? Probing the Great Gospel Conspiracy, and that's from Oxford University Press, and the early text of the New Testament, also from Oxford University Press.

And during his time on the RTS faculty, Dr. Hill has received several professional honors. He was elected as a Lilly Theological Research Grants Faculty Fellow for the academic year of 2000 through 2001, and a Henry Luce III Fellow in Theology for 2012.

In 2003, he was elected to the prestigious New Testament Studies Society, and I can't pronounce this Latin phrase here, since I don't have my glasses on, and as a member of several other academic societies.

Having pursued an undergraduate training in fine art, Dr. Hill worked as a commercial artist before entering theological study. He and his wife, Marcy, have three adult children and two grandchildren, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first on Iron, Sharp, and Zion, Dr. Charles Hill.

Thank you very much, Chris. And in studio with me again is my co-host, Reverend Buzz Taylor. Good to be back as usual. And I am going to be announcing throughout this broadcast some special events that Dr. Hill is going to be speaking at, or one specific event, and a couple of different presentations at this event, but the event that is being sponsored by the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals is How Firm a Foundation, the Bible's Authority, Sufficiency, and Clarity.

That's going to be held at the Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology, and the plenary speakers include Dr. Hill, Michael Kruger, who's been a guest on this program before, Philip Ryken, who has also been a guest on this program, and Derek Thomas, who looks like all of the plenary speakers, have been on this program before.

And the workshop speakers include Nathan Conant, David Garner, Jason Helopoulos, Evan Lowell, Richard Phillips, who's been on the program, and Jeff Stuyvesant, amongst others. And we are going to look forward to interviewing our brother today on some pretty fascinating subjects.

But before we even get into the conference at hand, Dr. Hill, tell our listeners something about Reformed Theological Seminary.

Well, before I start on that, I have one small correction to the introduction you gave. It was very kind of you to do that, but there are now four grandchildren, I'm happy to report. Oh, praise God. I suspected that.

Praise God. We'll blame the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals for my un-updated information. Yeah, I should get that.

There are several. The three main ones. I believe it was about, like, 1989 -94. I'm sure that, again, a lot of your listeners will have a Reformed Theological Seminary, but it's been a privilege to be there over the years.

To have a part.

Men and women. To go out. And the conference that Dr. Hill is speaking at is going to be held at the Proclamation Presbyterian Church in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. I don't know if I'm pronouncing it. It's being a new Pennsylvanian, a lifelong New Yorker.

I don't know if Bryn Mawr, do you know if that's the correct pronunciation of it? I think it's Bryn Mawr. Yeah, I think so.

I'm not sure exactly when they started, but this year they're actually having two venues. And the one I'm speaking at is actually in Grand Rapids. Oh, okay. That's right. I'm looking at that now.

That's Bryn Center, Michigan. Yeah. Yeah. And if anybody would want more information on both of these events, the first in Bryn Center, Michigan, April 15th through the 17th, or the second one in Pennsylvania, the 29th through May 1st, only the first one is where Dr. Hill is speaking, but it's the same conference, South Farmer Foundation, the Bible's Authority of Sufficiency and Clarity.

Go to Alliancenet .org, Alliancenet .org, and click on Events at the top of the screen. That's Alliancenet .org, and we hope that you can make at least one of those. And I know that we do have listeners in the Grand Rapids, Michigan area and have interviewed quite a number of people from Grand Rapids, Michigan, including Dr. Joel Beeky and Dr. David Murray and other folks that are out there.

So hopefully we will have some listeners going to hear you speak, brother. And before we even get into the main topic at hand, I've got to ask you just out of curiosity, and I don't know if it's going to be possible for you to summarize this briefly, but due to your background in patristics, since we have two people here on the panel who have different eschatological views, I was wondering what would be the dominant eschatological view that you've discovered from your study of patristics in the early church?

Eschatological Views in the Early Church

Well, that's a bit of trying to get a sweep of pretty much every eschatological view among Christians in the early centuries. I would say that there were two broadly speaking, two broad views, what we would probably call or what we call today premillennialism and what we would call amillennialism.

They didn't necessarily call them that. But probably by the 4th century, well, the 3rd century, there were people who were being called Kiliath, and that would refer, that's just a Greek word for thousand, thousand years, just like the Latin, we use millennial, millennialist.

And those were the premillennialists. So those are very early in the Christian tradition. What I think was one of the discoveries that came out of that research was that the, you might call amillennialism, was a lot stronger and deeper than is usually given credit for being.

And what I was looking at particularly is a neglected, almost forgotten about connection within eschatological views between views of the intermediate state of the soul and views of cosmic millennialism.

Your ideas on those, there was an understanding that resides in the subterranean until the resurrection. Or there was with Christ in heaven, in the presence of God, there to await the return of Christ and the resurrection of the body.

And that was more or less associated with the non-Kiliath. How about that?

Yeah, just to let you know, I happen to be an amillennialist, and my co-host, Reverend Buzz Taylor, is a post-millennialist. So I just thought I'd enlighten you as to why I wanted to ask that. So let's have a real party here now.

But one of the subjects we're addressing today, for the first hour, is how do we know the Bible is God's word, recovering the doctrine of a self-authenticating scripture? And this seems to be the area of apologetics and polemics where the Roman Catholic Church thinks they have a clear victory.

They think that we are without an answer, without relying on Mother Rome to decide these things for us, or having decided them for us in centuries past. But a very controversial issue, indeed, that separates the Church of Rome from historic Protestantism on the canon.

The Self-Authenticating Scripture and the Canon

But if you could comment on that. Well, right.

Reformation, logically, looks to the Bible with a canon, a determiner, God. But we have that, we certainly have that. At the time of the Reformation, other Reformers, of course, made a point. He said, our self-authenticating outfit makes it so.

Calvin did not reject the value of the extremely valuable. He said that the Church is not sufficient.

Of course, when the Church had accepted the books that we, as Protestants, hold to as the canon of scripture, the Roman Catholic Church was not in full bloom at that point anyway. Would you agree with that?

I would agree with that, yeah. Because they had gone through quite a de-evolution, I guess would be the best way to describe it, rather than evolution. But from the days of the patristic era to the 16th century Reformation, you had a Roman Catholic Church that would probably hardly have been recognized by the Fathers in the earlier centuries, right?

Yeah, I think so. Definitely by the 4th and 5th centuries, we're seeing something that has changed throughout. You don't have anything like it. I think one thing that almost everybody agrees on is that they're recognized.

And one question you have is the infallible authority. Why did the Church have any hesitation at all? Why weren't they all recognized? They only become infallible. The books themselves, we can easily believe that because we see everything.

Did the canon that we are aware of that was being held to by some of the earlier Fathers, like, for instance, Athanasius, who I believe was a 3rd century Father, was he not? 4th century. Oh, 4th century, okay.

How similar was the canon that he had to the Protestant canon as opposed to the Roman Catholic canon, which, of course, would differ on the Old Testament?

Well, he would even agree that the books that we usually call them…. They call them deuterocanonical. Deuterocanonical, which is probably a better word, actually, for them, I think. But that issue of the deuterocanonical books, the Old Testament and the New Testament, that has a very long history, and you can find Church Fathers on both sides of the thing you do have to say.

That set of books, deuterocanonical set of books, was never, would have been not always the same books. I would argue that what we seem to have is a virtual that we recognize. What about the order of the books?

Well, the order of the books was variable. You find, or even in the earliest great codices, that first five books. But then you might have some of the writing mixed in with some of the…. Right, right.

Or prophets later, were considered a unit.

Okay, I'm going to mention a name, okay? Simply because if you're familiar with the book I'm talking about, it'll help to guide this whole thing for the questions that I would have in my own mind. But I believe the fellow's name was Ernest L. Martin.

Does that name ring a bell? As far as writing a book called Restoring the Original Bible, I think was the title of the book. I read it years ago, so I don't remember all the details. But he contended that there was apostolic authority to the canonization of the New Testament and that the order of the books that we have today, in the New Testament specifically, did not arrive until, like, the Latin Vulgate, giving supremacy to Rome and all that stuff.

Have you heard any of this? I don't know if the guy was out to lunch or what.

Well, I'm not familiar with that book, so I would have to say that I…. Okay. I mean, you could describe it as he went on.

In the Old Testament books, he…. Well, first of all, he suggested an original order that the books were contained in, both of the Old and the New Testament. Of course, the Old Testament, you had, like, your 1st and 2nd Kings were one book.

1st and 2nd Samuel were one book. In fact, I think one of them was, like, 4 and 1. I can't remember exactly how he had them broken down. I don't have that information in front of me. But Joshua and Judges were one book originally.

Things like that, where the number of books and the order of the books was changed around. The number of books, yeah.

Well, there is…. Certainly, we have copies of Septuagint books. You do tend to have…. It varies. What I think you can say is there does not seem…. Remember that technology for the cook was just not there.

Technology was such that you had developed an order of the books. Keep in mind, that doesn't really make sense before about the 3rd or the 4th century AD. So, there would have been scrolls of 12 minor prophets in one scroll.

That kind of thing. So, sometimes, still, you're talking…. I could be missing something, but I've never been convinced by a lot of arguments that lay a lot of emphasis on the….

And, of course, the Deuterocanonical or the Apocryphal books that we mentioned earlier, they were not officially declared a part of the canon until after Trent, correct? I mean, wasn't…. It didn't even….

Didn't even…. Oh, his name is flying out of my head. The one who compiled the Latin Vulgate. Josip? No, no. Jerome. Jerome. Didn't he even protest the inclusion of the Deuterocanonical or Apocryphal books in the Old Testament canon?

Yes. Yes, he did.

I would say they were valuable to read. And you don't have people saying, don't read them.

They were recognized as not being a part of the canon by Judaism. That's right.

As not being scriptural. As not having authority. They were important historical books. They were important for the Jewish heritage, the biblical books. And so I think in the early church, there was a good bit of confusion at times about just what the role of these books ought to be.

So they were there, but like I said, it's not as though they were a known quantity. You had sometimes in lists or in collections, you might have some of them but not all of them. One collection would have 4th Maccabees as well as 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.

One would only have 1st of Daniel and others wouldn't. And that's not even a standard. I think that there was, even though they were then included in the Vulgate, over Reformation, you have, I believe this is correct, you have even Roman Catholic writers recognizing a difference, labeled them.

We're going to go to a break right now, but before we go to the break, I'd like to ask you a question so during the break you could think about it. One of the things that, according to the testimony of a very famous Roman Catholic apologist who was a Presbyterian convert to Rome, one of the things that he identifies as the key issue that was the final straw that broke the camel's back for him was the question of how an infallible collection of books that we call the Bible could have been compiled by a fallible church.

And the answer that one very well-known Reformed scholar today gave to this individual was that we have an infallible collection, I'm sorry, we have a fallible collection of infallible books. And that answer apparently drove this Presbyterian into the arms of Rome where he has remained for at least 20 years, perhaps longer than 20 years.

And I'm just not mentioning names here because I don't have their very words in front of me and so on and so on, I'm kind of quoting off the top of my head here, paraphrasing. But that was the primary issue and I've heard this come up in debate and so on.

I've arranged personally about 25 theological public and moderated debates between my friend Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries and at least 10 of those debates were with Roman Catholic scholars, apologists and clerics and that issue seems to come up all the time.

They think it's the Achilles heel of the Protestantism. But we're going to be coming right back after these messages with more discussion on this with Dr. Charles Hill, so don't go away. Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God?

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arms. And if you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours is Dr. Charles Hill of the Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Florida. And we are discussing a part of the conference that he is speaking at, How Firm a Foundation, the Bible's Authority, Sufficiency, and Clarity.

The branch or the location of the conference that our guest is speaking at is in the Grand Rapids, Michigan area. And the conference is April 15th through the 17th. And there are a number of other speakers.

There will also be a conference that does not include our guest, but includes other speakers there in the Philadelphia area, April 29th through May 1st. And for more information on this conference, How Firm a Foundation, the Bible's Authority, Sufficiency, and Clarity, go to AllianceNet .org.

AllianceNet .org. And also, our friends at PNR Publishing, Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, requested as new sponsors of the Iron Shepherd's Iron Program. I nearly screwed up the name of my own program there.

The PNR publishers have asked me to announce the Faithful Shepherd Conference in Harvey Cedars, New Jersey, that they are sponsoring alongside of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. That is a pastor's retreat in the beautiful Harvey Cedars, New Jersey, Christian retreat center right on the shore there in New Jersey.

I've been to Harvey Cedars. It's absolutely beautiful. And I'm sure it will even be more beautiful in May. But that's May 9th through the 11th. Dan Doriani and David Paulsen, who both have been guests on Iron Shepherds Iron in the past, they will both be speakers at this retreat.

And once again, go to AllianceNet .org for more details. AllianceNet .org and click on Events at the top of the page. And last but not least, I want to remind all men in ministry leadership, the Iron Shepherds Iron Pastor's and Ministry Leader Luncheon is going to be held this month, Thursday, April 28th, at the absolutely breathtakingly beautiful Thornwald Mansion of Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

It's quite a historic location and has been newly renovated. And this is absolutely free of charge from beginning to end. We have room for about 30 more pastors. So if you'd like to join us and you're a man in ministry, you don't have to be a pastor, but you have to be a man in some kind of leadership capacity in ministry or with a power church or organization, just email me at chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Chrisarnson at gmail .com. You're getting free lunch. You're getting a message by David Wood, who is a world-renowned apologist specializing in Islamic studies. And he is the founder and director of answeringmuslims .com.

That's answeringmuslims .com. And we also have a word from a very special guest, Pennsylvania State Representative Stephen Bloom who will be speaking at the Uninterrupted Zion radio pastor's luncheon as well.

So that's Thursday, April 28th. And if you'd like to go, if you know pastors or men in ministry leadership that either live in Pennsylvania or are willing to travel to the Carlisle, Pennsylvania area, have them email me at chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Chrisarnson at gmail .com. Well, Dr. Hill, I posed the question before the break that in the minds of some Roman Catholics you have an impossible situation. You cannot have an infallible Bible that has been collected and assembled and put together by fallible men because the choices they make are wrought with error and sin and therefore the canon that they came up with could not have been a trustworthy canon if they did not have the infallible vicar of Rome, the vicar of Christ on earth, proceeding over this selection of books.

If you could comment on that. Oh boy, there's so much to say.

Well, the idea of the church that collected and chose or determined has to be fallible or infallible, I think it misconceives what's going on in the church and in the formation of the canon. Back in the 3rd century, if you had asked them what was going on or what they were doing, people like Irenaeus, they would never have said anything like, well, we're in the churches determining the book.

We recognize the fact that it was decided by the church. They just didn't see it that way. You mentioned Calvin's idea or doctrine of the self-authentication of Scripture. What I'm going to be going through in the lecture is Calvin's idea, really.

We get that idea in the early church, the idea that Scripture doesn't need to be proved by anybody. You can't have anything higher than Scripture to appeal to. If you appeal to what you're saying, it's not just an infallible church.

You have a church that's a higher authority than Scripture. A while ago, the early church would have to say, well, where was that infallible church in the 2nd century? Where was that infallible church in the 3rd century?

Why would Origen mention that some people... How does it start to become infallible later? Well, I would say that an infallible hope or an infallible church, we should be saying, aren't we grateful that we have an infallible Holy Spirit who can sense us?

I mean, I think that the significant thing about the church finally finding consensus is that it's a show of the power of the Holy Spirit, the testimony of the Holy Spirit. And the early church fathers emphasized both that the Scriptures are their own proof, they're their own authentication.

But of course, we are fallible, so the only way we really recognize that is through the Holy Spirit's work. We call that the testimony of the Holy Spirit working in us. It's work, just like you can say, well, when a person becomes a Christian or just when the church, when people in the church know the power of Scripture as God's voice, that's because the Spirit's been at work in them.

It's like Paul says to the Thessalonians, For we know, brothers, love by God that he's chosen you, because our gospel came to you not only in words, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction.

And then he tells them that they received the word of God not as the word of men, but as what it really is, the power. The Thessalonians received it not as the word of men, but agreements. We still say there are people today all the time questioning.

And, in fact, there was obviously no pope in the Old Covenant, and the Jews were very much responsible for knowing what God's word was and what the Old Testament canon contained and so forth. And I remember I was stunned that a Roman Catholic apologist just answered that question by saying that the Pharisees were God's infallible governors over the canon in the Old Testament, which is ironic that they would be considered such, since they were the ones crying out eventually for the death of Christ.

So I think it's a pretty inadequate answer that they have to that. They have that same dilemma when it comes to the Old Testament.

Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. That's a very good point. Yeah, I think it's the whole apologist, but by scholarship, canon, the Church has done it. What is canon? Well, canon is the product of the Church's selection process.

The very way that people look at canon or define canon.

How would you differentiate if somebody were to be mocking the way that we are describing how the Church recognized the canon and accepted it and so on? It was received, not decided upon. I mean, this may seem like a comical or ridiculous comparison, but how would you respond to the person that might say, well, that sounds just as convincing or as reliable as the Mormons burning in his bosom, that he recognized that the Book of Mormon was true because of some kind of bizarre physical sensation that they claim that they have.

How is that any more reliable than something that the Mormons claim to authenticate their own Bible? Well, not their Bible, but what they believe is inspired work.

That kind of gets into the entire question of whether there's a spiritual work involved, an interior work of the Spirit, what you might call subjective work of the Spirit, that you can get around internally in us and that there is an objective element.

That doesn't mean that you have to get around that. You come up with, you invent a doctrine of the infallibility of the Church or the Pope or some count, you know, to get around that. The illustration, I'm throwing all my cards away, but this is the illustration.

Let's say you find a security situation, they say, okay, we'll just wait here, I'll come back in a few minutes. They want to lead you down a hallway into a room and you, oh, sorry, I forgot part of it.

You have to say, the officer first tells you, well, what does your mother look like? Tell me what she looks like. And you say, well, she's about five foot four. Okay, so he goes away, he comes back, takes you to a room and you open the door and there are like 25 women with curly gray hair and glasses and about five.

And you're reunited. And as you're walking out the door, wait, wait a minute, sir. You're very frustrated and you just want to leave and get on your plane. That's something across about, is like, it gives birth to the word of God.

Tells us, it's kind of like saying, well, how do we know black from white? Unless the Church tells us. How do we know sweet from good? The Church, they will always await any kind of declaration of the power.

And it seems to me from what you've been saying, and I know that some of my Arminian or non-reformed listeners may get upset with me by saying this, but it seems to me that a theologically reformed person who has a strong view and understanding of God's sovereign control over all things that even would override the alleged free will of man, this seems to have a lot to do with the certainty with which the Church may have in their embracing of this canon that we have called the Bible without having to be paranoid or worried that we're adopting and believing in something that is not God-breathed.

The sovereignty of God over this really is the key factor in how this came about and why we can have certainty and trust in this canon, correct?

Well, sure. That's the God we believe in. There are just many who say, hypothetically possibly, well, maybe we didn't get the right one.

Well, yes, but most of the problems today, though, isn't it more afraid that we've left something out more than that we've gotten one in that shouldn't have been there? But it seems like there's all of a sudden this pressure to accept the gospel of Thomas.

Well, that's exactly what our second hour is about.

Okay, great. Then I'll wait.

Well, you can comment if you'd like, Dr. Hill.

Well, right. I mean, the best way to convince yourself is to go and read the gospel of Thomas. Read these other books with grave doubt. Look at the book more about those. And read the Apostolic Father.

For the most part, they're very good. But the Apostolic Father, Barnabas, and so forth, there's a lot of edifying reading in there. They're not heretical, at least overtly heretical. There's good reading.

But very, very clearly, most of them are very clear about distinguishing themselves from the Apostles. They emphasize that they're not Apostles. And then look back to the Apostolic Age or the Apostolic Days, reasons why we want to talk about reasons, and we can certainly do that, characteristics and qualities of these books.

We can do that. And there are good reasons why. Apostolic Fathers, they're not New Testament.

And we have to go to our break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, for our guest, Dr. Charles Hill, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. Chrisarnson at gmail .com.

That's C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside of the USA. And when we come back from the break, we're going to be in our second hour of discussion.

And this time, the topic has shifted to another one of the addresses that Dr. Hill is presenting at the upcoming conference in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on The Hidden Gospels, Our Culture's Great Quest to Rewrite the Story of Jesus.

So once again, our email address, if you'd like to join us, is chrisarnson at gmail .com. Chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We're going to be right back with Dr. Charles Hill of Reform Theological Seminary in Orlando, Florida.

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Welcome back. This is Chris Sorensen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today is Dr. Charles Hill of Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Florida. He's going to be speaking in Grand Rapids, Michigan on the theme that we have been discussing today, How Firm a Foundation, The Bible's Authority, Sufficiency, and Clarity.

And if you'd like more details on this conference, go to AllianceNet .org. AllianceNet .org. And click on the Events button at the top of the screen. This conference is going to be held in two locations.

The first in Grand Rapids, where our guest will be one of the speakers, April 15th through the 17th. And the second will be in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, April 29th through May 1st, which will not include our guest, but will have other theologians, scholars, professors, and authors speaking on the same theme.

And we, for the first hour, were addressing the matters in regard to the self-authenticating scriptures. And now we're moving on to the Gnostic Gospels. And if you'd like to join us with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

Chrisarnson at gmail dot com. We do have a couple of people waiting for their questions to be asked and answered, but I wanted to get first a little bit more into a description of this subject matter.

The actual address title that you will be speaking on at the conference is Hidden Gospels, Our Culture's Quest to Rewrite the Story of Jesus. How many, if you are aware, how many of these counterfeit gospels are the primary sources that liberals are pointing to and those who are trying to call into question the reliability of the New Testament, how many of these gospels are sometimes called apocryphal, not in the same sense as the Old Testament books that are also due to Quranical books embraced by Rome, but in this case you have books that Rome would agree with us do not belong in the canon.