Conclusion to the Sola Scriptura Series: Apostolic Tradition and Canon Issues

Greetings. Welcome to The Dividing Line. What we're going to do on the program today is try to finish up, if we can, the Sola Scriptura series. I can't guarantee that I'll be able to do that because, really, honestly, this is just an introduction and there's so much more and I just can't guarantee that I'll be able to control myself.

If the spirit moves, at the end of the program, maybe finally, we will do the political segment that everyone has been asking about in light of, well, as I tweeted last night, I was at church last night, which was very nice to hear the Word of God preached.

We had hymns sing. We had a fellowship meal afterwards. That was wonderful. That was really good. But anyway, you can't hide from what's going on today, so maybe, we'll see. Especially since Dr. Gagnon has been commenting on my Facebook page, so we've had a little bit of a conversation.

So, we'll see. We'll see. But honestly, I still think far more important things to do, and that is deal with the issue of Sola Scriptura. Now, obviously, for a lot of people, that's a reversal of priorities.

For a lot of people, what's going on politically, far more important, far more passionate about that subject than they could ever be about the sufficiency of Scripture, Sola Scriptura. But to be honest with you, the differing responses to the political situation very frequently go back to whether you believe, acknowledge, actually try to live in light of Sola Scriptura, or whether you don't.

Whether you have a real foundational commitment to the sufficiency of Scripture, or whether you really don't. I think a lot of it goes back to that. So, what are some of the things that we have to yet address?

Well, we've looked at most of the presentation and the argumentation, not completely. So, we will have to look at a few more clips, and I will not look at, listen to, a few more clips on the subject from Carlo Broussard.

And then we need to talk a little bit about the canon of Scripture, and we need to look at the concept of apostolic tradition, because this is the term that is found amongst early church fathers. And obviously, Roman Catholic apologists grab onto that and say, see, here is the unwritten tradition, here is evidence of the tradition being passed down outside of Scripture.

And there have been some Protestant writers who likewise have looked at this concept of tradition, apostolic tradition, and tried to utilize it in, how would I describe it? Warning against what they call solo scriptura, Scripture by itself, which is different than sola scriptura, which is Scripture as the sole infallible rule of faith for the church.

Solo scriptura would refer to a disengagement of the Scriptures, really from the role that we believe that they are to have, and that's part and parcel of their sufficiency. So in other words, one of the things that I'll be arguing in regards to the canon of Scripture is that God has just as much a purpose in having His people know what He has inspired as He has in inspiring it in the first place.

Why inspire it? If it has the purpose of edifying the saints, edifying the church, being the voice of Christ for the bride of Christ, then He's going to make sure, just as He exercised the divine power in the inspiration of it, that then it is preserved for and known to the very ones to whom He wants to make it known and wants to make it such a gift of grace and guidance and light and so on and so forth.

And so we need to look at apostolic tradition because those who would, from the Protestant perspective, they want to avoid the concept of solo scriptura, and properly so, because it allows the Scriptures, you know, the old Scripture, my Bible and me under a tree, and that's not the reason that God gave the Scripture.

It's not why He ever gave the Scripture. It's a very selfish, self-centered, narrow, shallow view. Very common, but still all of those things would be descriptive of it. So we need to take a look at that.

And basically what we'll discover is that when the early church fathers use the phrase apostolic tradition, it is sub-biblical. In other words, when they then describe what that is, it is either a basic summary of biblical revelation, hence is sub-biblical, or sometimes it is used of other things that, well, nobody today actually believes the apostles actually passed down.

So we'll try to get to all of that. That's why I said, just don't know if we're going to finish it up today. I don't want to rush it. If we have to finish it up later in the week, that's fine. We'll do what we need to do.

All right, let's need to find my... because I need to hear what I'm responding to. It really would not work well to play something and then go, hmm. Actually, it would sound a little bit like a presidential debate, where what the other person said really doesn't matter to what you're saying.

It's just, they could have said, you know, in some of these debates, I think the other side could literally break into tongues. And the other guy wouldn't even, or gal, wouldn't even note it because they're just focusing on what their next soundbite is supposed to be.

That's why there is just generally no interaction going on at all. And it's, yes, I did get all of your tweets last night going, why can't James White moderate this? Please. Why do you hate me? What did I ever do to you?

I know what you're meaning, but do you really think that anyone could control those two people? I don't think that's possible. Anyway, all right, let's go back to Carla Broussard, get to work here.

Now, when it comes to the magisterium, Jay, I'll just conclude with this. When it comes to the magisterium, it is true that the magisterium is only the servant, as the Second Vatican Council stated, of sacred scripture and sacred tradition, both together comprising the word of God.

God's word, the deposit of faith. The magisterium is the servant of the word of God by protecting the purity of the truth of the word of God guided by the Holy Spirit, expounding the word of God for us, and communicating it to us in intelligible ways that we can understand as time goes on.

So the magisterium is not of equal value ontologically speaking of the nature of God's word, of course not. But the magisterium is given to us by Christ with the guidance of the Holy Spirit to protect that word of God and transmit it to all generations until the end of the world.

Now, obviously, I don't believe in anything called a magisterium. I do not believe in the concept of doctrinal development that has allowed cardinals and archdeacons and all the complexities that clearly have no basis whatsoever in the New Testament.

I don't believe it's a gift from God or any of these types of things. God's given us a church. He's given us elders. He's given us deacons. He hasn't given us something called a magisterium, the Bishop of Rome, or any of the rest of these things.

But once again, we already went through the demonstration that there is no logical or rational way for this statement to make sense. How can the servant of Scripture and tradition, how can it be the servant when your knowledge of what Scripture is and what it says and means and what tradition is and what it says and means is all determined by the magisterium?

How can that be a servant? I mean, that's nice language. Vatican II is filled with gobbledygook language. And there are very conservative, traditionalist Roman Catholics who would agree. It's filled with words that don't have a whole lot of real meaning to them.

And that would be an example of it, I would suggest. But it sounds great, but what does it mean? But notice the use of term ontologically. The magisterium is not Theanustas. And the only thing that we have that we know is Theanustas is Scripture.

I didn't play it, but you can watch it. Listen to the cross-examination between myself and Mitch Pacwa. And specifically, listen to where I asked, has the magisterium infallibly defined a single word that Jesus ever said?

No. How about anything the apostles ever said? No. So, all we have is Theanustas. It's found in Scripture. Nothing else. That's very important. So, ontologically, the magisterium is different. It's not Theanustas.

I would say that means ontologically it is inferior to, on the level of authority, God speaking. Because it's not God speaking. Does that help, Jake?

I have a follow-up question, if I might. Yeah, go ahead, Jake. That explanation of magisterium helped me, because I'm trying to understand what sort of prioritization there is between those three elements.

And if I understand what you're saying correctly, in Thessalonians, there's, again, it's an admonition to keep to the traditions. Correct. But it doesn't nearly state as strongly as, I can't remember, was it in Peter? 2 Thessalonians.

The one I referred to? Scripture is sufficient. Oh, that was 2 Timothy 3. It doesn't say that the traditions are sufficient. It's more like, don't forsake. Don't neglect it. Yeah, that's true. It seems like there is still a prioritization that places Scripture a step above tradition as well.

That's a really great follow-up. The submission we have to the Word of God as written. In other words, we don't go up to a book of the Second Vatican Council documents and genuflect, right? It's not sacred Scripture.

Yeah, this is possibly another distinction that might help you, Jay, is the teachings, let me say, the infallible teachings of the magisterium throughout the ages, they are not inspired by God. They're not the inspired Word of God, as we would say God's Word in its written form and unwritten form, Scripture and tradition, is.

Now, isn't it interesting that the ontologically uninspired words of the magisterium, from the Roman Catholic perspective, are required to have a solid understanding of that which is theanustos? Wouldn't you think logically it would have to be the other way around?

Don't you think logically what God says would explain what man says? Not the other way around? Because the whole argument is so often, well, you've got all these disagreements and Scripture is difficult to understand.

And, you know, they love going to Peter's statement, talking about what Paul wrote and saying that, well, see, people can twist it to their own destruction. And so you need the magisterium. Well, the reality is that what Peter said when it talked about untaught and unstable men twisted their own destruction.

What does that mean? Have you ever thought about it? If untaught and unstable men twisted their own destruction, that means taught and stable men will be able to accurately handle it and utilize it properly, right?

Yeah, of course. So this recognition, you know, Rome wants to have its cake and eat it at the same time. And it's an inherently contradictory system. Where on the one hand, the magisterium defines Scripture, defines its meaning, defines tradition, defines its meaning, can dogmatically do all these things.

And really the attraction that Rome advertises is unity. The unity that comes from having the living magisterium. But then has to admit, well, yeah, but the magisterium is ontologically less than that which is theanoustos, that which is God breathed.

And so you have that which is God breathed being put under the authority of the defining authority, interpretational authority of that which is not, and that's an improper relationship.

The teachings of the magisterium are not inspired by God, but they are infallible, which simply means they're protected by the Holy Spirit from any sort of error concerning faith and morals. So there is, like I said earlier, to use that fancy philosophical word ontologically, that is the nature of things.

There is a distinction to be made between the nature of God's word in Scripture and tradition and the teachings of the magisterium. Now to get back to your traditions in 2 Thessalonians, you mentioned how Scripture is sufficient from 2 Timothy 3, verse 16.

But as I already pointed out at the beginning of the show, it doesn't say Scripture is sufficient, it says it's profitable. And we would also say sacred tradition is profitable, not sufficient. Sacred tradition doesn't exclude God's revelation in its written form, namely Scripture.

But both of them together comprise the deposit of faith, God's word, which was entrusted to the successors of the apostles to transmit to us by the guidance of the Holy Spirit so that we can know the truth and be set free.

So I think we may have just briefly mentioned part of that before, but again, we demonstrated that 2 Timothy 3 does, in fact, speak of the sufficiency of Scripture to fully equip the man of God for every good work.

That is the very issue at stake here. But trying to keep the legs of the three-legged stool even doesn't work, not functionally, not with the way that Rome has done it. Now, we didn't get to one other biblical text.

I don't want to skip over any because then we might get accused of, ah, but you didn't respond to that. That means you can't. That's always sort of how it ends up working. But here's another text that did come up, so we want to make sure to take a look at it.

Oops, I guess I, there we go.

Maybe one more thought hanging in the air. Did you want to add something, Carlin, before we go forward?

Yeah, with our previous caller, we were talking about he was having a hard time seeing how Scripture and tradition could be of equal value and where is that in the writings of the New Testament. One particular passage that came to mind over the break was 1 Thessalonians 2, verse 13, where St. Paul identifies his preaching and what the Thessalonians received was the Word of God.

He writes, you received the Word of God, which you heard from us. You accepted it, not as the Word of men, but as what it really is, the Word of God, which is at work in you believers. So we see that the apostolic preaching itself was identified as the Word of God.

So the Word of God in first century Christianity was not restricted to the written form. That is the letter of the apostles, the inspired Word of God, and it's written form. The Word of God also included the apostolic preaching, which is what the church identifies as the sacred tradition.

So we see the sacred tradition and sacred Scripture being on a par with each other, and as the Second Vatican Council said, should be treated with equal sentiments of devotion and value, etc. Because they both together comprise the very Word of God, namely God's divine revelation.

So now what I should have done is I should have said, okay, those of you who have listened to the entire series so far, I'm not sure how many hours it's been, but we're probably getting up toward four, five hours of webcasting now.

Yeah, we'll ask Algo exactly how many it's been. How would you respond to that? How would you respond to that? Because you should be able to respond to that because there was a fundamental error that Catholic Answers made throughout this program that we identified from the beginning.

We've explicated it, we've drawn that out a number of times, and there it was very clearly seen in the interpretation of 1 Thessalonians 2 .13. So once again, for this reason, we also constantly thank God that when you received the Word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the Word of men, but for what it really is, the Word of God, which also performs its work in you who believe.

So the oral apostolic preaching is called the Word of God. Doesn't that prove the Roman Catholic position? And the appropriate response is, at this point, you can pause the webcast to talk to your computer, if you'd like, as long as you're alone in your cubicle and no one will be able to notice what you're doing, or you're home alone, you're maybe on the treadmill, on the bike.

Those of you who are my fellow cyclists, rowing, whatever it is you're doing, as long as you're not going to look too weird, not that anyone really cares, because I talk to myself very frequently out in the middle of nowhere at four o 'clock in the morning in the dark on a bike.

So it's okay. Look at me, I'm fine. Anyway, so what's the fundamental problem here? Well, it was a fundamental problem with the entire assumption. Were the apostles Bible-only Christians? What did we say right from the beginning?

Sola Scriptura isn't addressing that and doesn't claim that. And once again, so often Christians get themselves in a position of defending positions and defending things that they have no business defending.

We're not defending that the Word of God was not spoken, because it was. One of the things that we went through when I gave the little keynote presentation was, this is not a denial, that during periods of inscripturation, the Word of God was spoken.

But what would this actually, what would be required of the really honest, compelling Roman Catholic apologist at this point? What would they have to prove for this to actually be relevant? They would have to prove that what Paul delivered to the Thessalonians was different in substance than what we possess in the New Testament today.

In other words, once again, they're assuming that there was information, revelation in this oral tradition that is different from, that contains all the stuff that they have now defined, used to define dogmas such as the Marian dogmas and papal infallibility and all the rest of this stuff.

And of course, they don't even want to begin to go there for the obvious reason that the early church didn't believe these things, there's no evidence of those things, absolute silence. They just simply have to go, well, you know, I just, we just, yeah, we believe that.

And of course, their scholars don't want to say, yeah, the apostle taught the Thessalonians about papal infallibility, because they know the papacy developed over time, that no one had any concept of it at this point in history.

And they know the Marian dogmas now, no, and that was not, this all developed over time. And so the idea that Paul was actually preaching this to the Thessalonians. So, you know, this whole thing just doesn't really work because in reality, we've already shown that when Paul says word of mouth or a letter from us, he's talking about the one thing of the God, the one message of the gospel.

That's what he's talking about. And that's what they are to be holding to is that one message of the gospel. And so, yes, the apostolic preaching was authoritative. It's identified as the word of God, which has its work within you.

And that was because what they were delivering was the very message of the gospel, the essence of the gospel. It's the gospel is the power of God and salvation. That's why there's the connection between the two.

But the assumption, the errant assumption that is being made by Catholic answers at this point is that to believe in sola scriptura is to believe that the apostles were functioning on that basis while giving revelation, which is impossible.

You don't have a scriptura to be a sola when you have the scripture being given at that time. The issue is what is the sole infallible rule of the faith of the church today where we agree there is no revelation taking place?

That's the issue. And unfortunately, that issue did not get addressed. So with that having been said, isn't there evidence that the early church fathers used a concept of apostolic tradition? Well, they said they did.

You can get quotes and the quotes are not hard to discover if you want to look them up. Here's an example of one from his work against heresies. Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyon, died toward the end of the second century, said,.

But on this account, are we bound to avoid them, but to make choice of the things pertaining to the church with the utmost diligence and to lay hold of the tradition of the truth? For how should it be if the apostles themselves have not left us writings?

Would it not be necessary in that case to follow the course of the tradition which they handed down to those to whom they did commit the churches? And so, it certainly seems to be speaking of tradition as an extra-biblical thing, just as the Council of Trent did, just as Carlo Roussard was on Catholic Answers Live.

In the first part of the same work, Irenaeus also said, As I have already observed, the church, having received this preaching and this faith, although scattered throughout the whole world, yet as if occupying but one house, carefully preserves it.

For although the languages of the world are dissimilar, yet the import of the tradition is one and the same. So, here's tradition. Isn't this exactly what I've been arguing against? Isn't this a parallel transmission of revelational data not found in the scriptures?

Well, the problem is, Irenaeus then defines for us what this tradition is. And here's what he says, These have all declared to us that there is one God, creator of heaven and earth, announced by the law and the prophets, and one Christ, the Son of God.

If anyone does not agree to these truths, he despises the companions of the Lord, nay more. He despises Christ himself, the Lord, yea, he despises the Father also, and stands self-condemned, resisting and opposing his own salvation, as is the case with all heretics.

And so here is what tradition is for Irenaeus. It is sub-biblical. It is a fundamental, basic, almost creedal assertion that you have to begin with a recognition of the foundational truths of scripture.

If you come to the Bible and you ignore their context, you ignore their Jewishness, you ignore the monotheism out of which they came, you transport them out of that into a foreign context that allows you to insert all sorts of pagan concepts and worldview issues that would have had nothing to do with the apostles.

And this is what so many people to this day do, they ignore all that kind of stuff. Then you can turn the scriptures into mishmash. It's like reading a believing Mormon attempting to write a commentary on the Book of Romans.

It just doesn't work. Because you cannot make heads or tails out of the Book of Romans if you have Joseph Smith's God as your foundation. It just doesn't make any sense. It can't be done. That's proven by the fact that Joseph Smith had to make fundamental changes in the text of the Book of Romans.

Instead of the God who justifies the ungodly, it's the God who does not justify the ungodly. When you've got to reverse entire statements showing that Smith had no concept of justification whatsoever, then there you go.

That's basically what Irenaeus was saying. When the Gnostics take the scriptures, Old and New Testament, and transport them out of the context of their fundamental teaching of monotheism and the coming of Christ, and put them into a context of this completely foreign worldview that never existed in Jerusalem or Galilee in the days of Jesus or the early days of the apostles, and then say, well, you need to interpret it this way, that they are thoroughly corrupting the faith.

Now they're going to say, and this came down from the apostles, of course they're going to say that. But it's not some type of external revelation. Everything in that tradition is directed out of scripture.

It's directed out of scripture. Now they're saying, yes, the apostles taught these things because the Gnostic heretics were saying otherwise. I would imagine that there would have been more emphasis, for example, upon monotheism if the early heresy the church was dealing with was Mormonism.

Joseph Smith had been born long before he was, but that wasn't the case at all. Now, there are other uses of this concept of tradition. Now, before I go a little bit later, I forgot to bring up the reference.

I'm sorry. I can look it up if someone has to, but if someone absolutely demands it. But Irenaeus, as far as we can tell, and this is in the, what do we call it, vintage stuff on the blog. If you go to vintage stuff at aomin .org on the blog, I know there's a rather full discussion of this because I remember it from years and years and years ago back in the 90s somewhere.

I think what we did is we took a lot of those long articles that we wrote and converted them into rather long blog articles. So they're on the blog somewhere. In fact, if you search for Irenaeus, there can't be that many references.

There would be some, but there can't be that many references. I have a feeling it'll come up in a search on Irenaeus in the blog. As far as I know, and I'm open to correction on this, but no one's actually disputed this for years.

As far as I know, Irenaeus is the first one to use phraseology of, we know this because it was passed down to us from the apostles. It's apostolic tradition passed down to us from the apostles. In other words, he's the first one that we know of that makes a claim to having knowledge of a particular truth that is not found in scripture, but comes from the apostles.

Now, Irenaeus flourishes around 180, may have died as late as 200. It might have been a little bit before that, because that's when we sort of see the primary persecution around Leon. So he dies pretty much before the third century.

So he's early on. Now, he's not within the first generation who knew the apostles, but he's not too far removed. He would have known those who had known those who had known the apostles, basically. Or at least some of the apostles, the longer living ones.

So you would think that Irenaeus is so early. I mean, consider the difference between Irenaeus' claim here and Rome's claim from the 1950s, or even the 1850s, about Mary. Immaculate conception, bodily assumption.

I mean, that's a long time to be transmitting this traditional belief in comparison to only a century. From the last of the apostles until Irenaeus says this was passed down from the apostles. So you would think if this category of apostolic tradition outside of scripture is a valid category, what Irenaeus said should be the purest example we have.

You know what Irenaeus said that he had learned that was passed down from the apostles? He was talking about the section in John chapter 8, where when Jesus was talking about having seen Abraham saw his day.

And remember what the Jews said, you're not yet 50 years old. And yet you've seen Abraham. And that's when Jesus said,. And so Irenaeus says that he received a tradition passed down from the apostles that Jesus was more than 50 years of age.

And it was part of his recapitulation theory, the idea that Jesus recapitulated all the ages of man's life in himself so he can redeem all of mankind. It was a sort of different perspective. And no one really thinks that Irenaeus was right about that.

I mean, I don't know anyone who seriously believes that Jesus lived into his 50s. Rome certainly doesn't believe that's an apostolic tradition. So isn't it odd that the first time someone says, ah, we have information not found in the Bible.

And it came from the apostles. And it's that Jesus was more than 50 years old. But no one believes they're right. Hmm. If Irenaeus could have a corrupted apostolic tradition by the end of the second century, why do you think that it could go all the way to the 19th century without being corrupted?

That is a question. But then there are other uses of this phrase apostolic tradition that, again, most of us would agree. Hmm. Basil of Caesarea, 330 to 379. So you're talking 150 years down the road from the end of Irenaeus' life.

In his treatise On the Spirit, Basil made the following famous remarks. Of the beliefs and practices, whether generally accepted or publicly enjoined, which are preserved in the church, some we possess derived from written teaching.

Others we have received delivered to us in a mystery by the tradition of the apostles. And both of these in relation to true religion have the same force. And these no one will gainsay, no one at all events, who is even moderately versed in the institutions of the church, for were we to attempt to reject such customs as have no written authority on the ground that the importance of they possess is small, we should unintentionally injure the gospel and its very vitals, or rather should make our public definition a mere phrase and nothing more.

Well, sounds like he's saying the gospel itself is at stake here. So let's see what he's actually talking about. What are these traditions, these unwritten traditions from the apostles? For instance, to take the first and most general example, who is there who has taught us in writing to sign with the sign of the cross those who have trusted in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ?

What writing has taught us to turn to the east at prayer? Which of the saints has left us in writing the words of the invocation at the displaying of the bread of the Eucharist and the cup of blessing?

For we are not, as is well known, content with what the apostle or the gospel has recorded, but both in preface and conclusion we add other words as being of great importance to the validity of the ministry.

And these we derive from unwritten teaching. Moreover, we bless the water of baptism and the oil of the chrism. And besides this, the catechumen who is being baptized. On what written authority do we do this?

Is not our authority silent and mystical tradition? Nay, by what written word is the anointing of oil itself taught? And whence comes the custom of baptizing thrice? So, as I said, no matter how we might view Basil's beliefs, one thing is certain, the matters that he lists as being addressed by tradition are not the very matters that Rome would have us to believe comprise their oral tradition.

Basil is talking about traditions with reference to practices and piety. We note with some irony that Rome does not believe Basil is correct in his claims in this passage. Does Rome say we must face to the east at prayer?

Does Rome insist upon triune baptism after the eastern mode? Yet these are the practices that Basil defines as being derived from tradition. And so, there are those places where that terminology is used.

And they are either used in the earlier years of matters that are not, in fact, extra-biblical revelation, but are sub-biblical categories revealed in Scripture. Or then later, with Basil, you have these practices that have become current, and the claim is, well, this is where it comes from.

This is the foundation of that. Now, get a deep seat in the saddle, because we're not going to take the time to go back over everything that you could hear. There are two debates we've done. Only two?

I think there are two debates we have done over the years on the subject of the Apocrypha. Probably the clearer of the two was the one with Gary Machuta in New York, and that one we also have a decent video of available on YouTube.

And then probably the more fiery one was the debate with Jerry Matitix from all the way back, and all we have of that is audio, from 1993 at Boston College. It was about, wow, at least 10 years between them.

Maybe, I think, a little bit more than that, between those two debates. Maybe as much as 15, depending on when the Machuta debate was one of the last ones we did. Anyway, if you want more in-depth discussion of issues like the Apocrypha and all sorts of stuff like that, then take a look at those debates.

But I do want to remind some of you, because some of you have listened for a long time and could probably make the presentation I'm going to make here in a moment yourselves. But for many, many Christians, what I'm currently sending you, it'll probably be the first time you've heard it.

And as such, you may need to go back and listen to it. The problem is the issue of the canon of Scripture is just not something that we sit around and talk about a lot. And when we do, unfortunately, there's just so much misunderstanding, so much tradition, so much stuff out there.

I remember years ago, back in seminary, you sit around during one of the breaks. And so, you know, what if we found a new letter from Paul? Someone's digging through some stuff, and up comes this letter, and lo and behold, it says it's from Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ.

And it looks pretty authentic, and it matches his grammar, and there's nothing heretical in it. So would we add it to the New Testament? We have to retranslate all their Bibles. And what will we do? And stuff like that.

Yeah, that happens. But for most Christians, you know, you have your Bible, and you have your 66 books, if you're even aware of how many books you've got. And you just don't give a lot of thought to the fact of how you got that, what the history of that was.

Not only the reality that the books that you love the best, say you're just, like so many saints down through the ages, have just been in love with Romans. And you just, the soaring heights of chapter 8, and great gospel core in 3, 4, and 5, and justification, and all that kind of stuff.

And you've never really thought about the fact that that book once existed as a single papyrus letter, written in Koine Greek, being carried in a leather pouch by a guy who never owned a stick of deodorant.

Walking dusty roads on the way to the city of Rome. And being aware of that, of realizing the history, the fact that God has always given His word. You look at Jeremiah, and giving his revelation, and the scroll being cut up.

It's always been messy. It's always been God. It's always been Emmanuel. Emmanuel is a messy phrase. God with us. It's not because God's messy, it's because we are. But unlike the Muslims, we believe God has entered into His own creation.

So, He's been intimately involved with His people from the start. And so it shouldn't shock us or surprise us that the word comes to us in that kind of way. It didn't float down on a cloud, it didn't come with little golden plates, and angels, and strumming of harps, or any of that type of stuff.

It came in what would seem, you know, when that guy carrying the first copy of Romans, which was not written by Paul. It was dictated by Paul. That's what the letter says itself. When he's walking down the streets of Rome, the letter of Romans wasn't glowing in the dark.

It could have been stolen. He could have been, you know, if God wasn't providentially in control of His world, He could have been mugged. Letter stolen, destroyed. All sorts of stuff like that, right?

God made His revelation in history, and there is a history as to how those books came together. How they were copied. As I said many times, the text. And there's a major difference in how the prophets, the writings of Moses, the historical works, which we call the Tanakh.

Very different transmission methodology, because the Old Testament text given to a particular people in a particular place, it's not really until the Greek translation of the Old Testament into what's called the Septuagint, it's not really until then that you have that scripture beginning to have an impact outside of just the people of Israel.

And I do find interesting that that doesn't really happen until pretty much the canon of the Old Testament has been understood by God's people. Laying up of the books in the temple, things like that. I mentioned Roger Beckwith's book, The Old Testament Canon, New Testament Church.

Take a look at that if you want more details on that. But the transmission methodology for the New Testament and Old Testament, very different from one another. And it took time. The text and the canon, they are related, but they must be distinguished from one another.