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

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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

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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.

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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.

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In light of, well, as I tweeted last night, I was at church last night, which was very nice to hear the

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Word of God preached. We had hymns sing. We had a fellowship meal afterwards.

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That was wonderful. That was really good. Anyway, you can't hide from what's going on today, so maybe we'll see.

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Especially since Dr. Gagnon has been commenting on my Facebook page, so we've had a little bit of a conversation.

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We'll see. We'll see. Honestly, I still think far more important things to do, and that is deal with the issue of Sola Scriptura.

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Now, obviously, for a lot of people, that's a reversal of priorities.

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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.

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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.

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Whether you have a real foundational commitment to the sufficiency of Scripture, or whether you really don't.

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I think a lot of it goes back to that. So what are some of the things that we have to yet address?

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Well, we've looked at most of the presentation and the argumentation, not completely.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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I describe it? Warning against what they call solo scriptura,

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Scripture by itself, which is different than sola scriptura, which is

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Scripture as the sole infallible rule of faith for the church. Solo scriptura would refer to a disengagement of the

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Scriptures, really from the role that we believe that they are to have, and that's part and parcel of their sufficiency.

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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

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His people know what He has inspired as He has in inspiring it in the first place.

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If it has the purpose of edifying the saints, edifying the church, being the voice of Christ for the bride of Christ, then

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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

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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.

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And so we need to look at apostolic tradition because those who would, from the

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Protestant perspective, they want to avoid the concept of solo scriptura, and properly so, because it allows the

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Scriptures, you know, the old Scripture, my Bible and me under a tree, and that's not the reason that God gave the

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Scripture. It's not why He ever gave the Scripture. It's a very selfish, self -centered, narrow, shallow view.

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Very common, but still all of those things would be descriptive of it.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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I don't want to rush it. If we have to finish it up later in the week, that's fine.

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We'll do what we need to do. All right, let's, need to find my, because I need to hear what

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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 presidential debate, where what the other person said really doesn't matter to what you're saying.

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They could have said, you know, in some of these debates, I think the other side could literally break into tongues.

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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.

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That's why there is just generally no interaction going on at all.

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Yes, I did get all of your tweets last night going, why can't Jay Z moderate this, please?

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Why do you hate me? What did I ever do to you? I know what you're meaning, but you really think that anyone could control those two people?

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I don't think that's possible. Anyway, all right, let's go back to Carla Broussard, get to work here.

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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

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Second Vatican Council stated, of sacred scripture and sacred tradition, both together comprising the word of God, right?

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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

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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.

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So the magisterium is not of equal value ontologically speaking of the nature of God's word, of course not.

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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.

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Now, obviously, I don't believe in anything called a magisterium.

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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

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New Testament. I don't believe it's a gift from God or any of these types of things.

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God's given us 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.

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But once again, we already went through the demonstration that there is no logical or rational way for this statement to make sense.

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How can the servant of Scripture and tradition, how can it be the servant when your knowledge of what

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Scripture is and what it says and means and what tradition is and what it says and means is all determined by the magisterium?

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How can that be a servant? I mean, that's nice language. Vatican II is filled with gobbledygook language.

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And there are very conservative traditionalist Roman Catholics who would agree. It was filled with words that don't have a whole lot of real meaning to them.

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And that would be an example of it, I would suggest. But, you know, it sounds great.

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But what does it mean? But notice the use of term ontologically. The magisterium is not

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Theanustos. And the only thing that we have that we know is

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Theanustos is Scripture. I didn't play it, but you can watch it.

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Listen to the cross -examination between myself and Mitch Pacwan. And specifically, listen to where I asked, has the magisterium infallibly defined a single word that Jesus ever said?

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No. How about anything the apostles ever said? No. So, all we have is

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Theanustos is found in Scripture, nothing else.

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That's very important. So, ontologically, the magisterium is different. It's not Theanustos. I would say that means, ontologically, it is inferior to, on the level of authority,

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God speaking. Because it's not God speaking. Does that help, Jay? It helps, but I have a follow -up question, if I might.

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Yeah, go ahead, Jay. That explanation of magisterium helped me, because I'm trying to understand what sort of prioritization there is between those three elements.

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And if I understand what you're saying correctly, in Thessalonians, there's, again, it's an admonition to keep to the traditions.

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Correct. But it doesn't nearly state as strongly as, I can't remember, was it in Peter?

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2 Thessalonians? The one I referred to? Scripture is sufficient. Oh, that was 2

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Timothy 3. It doesn't say that the traditions are sufficient. Okay. It's more like, don't forsake.

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Okay. Don't neglect it. All right. Yeah, that's true. It seems like there is still a prioritization that places

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Scripture a step above tradition, as well. That's a really great follow -up. The submission we have to the

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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?

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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.

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They're not the inspired Word of God, as we would say, God's Word in its written form and unwritten form,

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Scripture and tradition, is. Now, isn't it interesting that the ontologically uninspired words of the magisterium, from the

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Roman Catholic perspective, are required to have a solid understanding of that which is

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Theanostas? Wouldn't you think logically it would have to be the other way around? Don't you think logically what

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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Yeah, of course. So this recognition, you know,

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Rome wants to have its cake and eat it at the same time. And it's an inherently contradictory system.

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Where on the one hand, the magisterium defines Scripture, defines its meaning, defines tradition, defines its meaning, can dogmatically do all these things.

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And really the attraction that Rome advertises is unity.

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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

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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.

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And that's an improper relationship. The teachings of the magisterium are not inspired by God, but they are infallible.

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Which simply means they're protected by the Holy Spirit from any sort of error concerning faith and morals.

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So there is, like I said earlier, to use that fancy philosophical word ontologically, that is the nature of things.

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There is a distinction to be made between the nature of God's word in Scripture and tradition and the teachings of the magisterium.

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Now to get back to your traditions in 2 Thessalonians, you mentioned how Scripture is sufficient from 2

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Timothy 3, verse 16. But as I already pointed out at the beginning of the show, it doesn't say Scripture is sufficient.

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It says it's profitable. And we would also say sacred tradition is profitable. Not sufficient. Sacred tradition doesn't exclude

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God's revelation in its written form, namely Scripture. But both of them together comprise the deposit of faith,

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God's word, which was entrusted to the successors of the apostles to transmit to us by the guidance of the

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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.

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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.

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That is the very issue at stake here. But trying to keep the legs of the three -legged stool even doesn't work.

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Not functionally. Not with the way that Rome has done it. Now, we didn't get to one other biblical text.

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I don't want to skip over any because then we might get accused of, ah, but you didn't respond to that.

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That means you can't. That's always sort of how it ends up working. Here is another text that did come up.

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So we want to make sure to take a look at it. Oops. I guess I, there we go.

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Maybe one more thought hanging in the air. Did you want to add something, Carlo, before we go forward? Yeah. With our previous caller, we were talking about he was having a hard time seeing how

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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

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Thessalonians 2, verse 13, where St. Paul identifies his preaching and what the

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Thessalonians received was the word of God. He writes, you received the word of God, which you heard from us.

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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.

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So we see that the apostolic preaching itself was identified as the word of God.

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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.

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And it's written form. The word of God also included the apostolic preaching, which is what the church identifies as the sacred tradition.

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So we see tradition, the sacred tradition and sacred Scripture being on a par with each other.

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And as the Second Vatican Council said, you know, should be treated with equal sentiments of devotion and value, etc.

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Because they both together comprise the very word of God, namely God's divine revelation.

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So now what I should have done is I should have said, OK, those of you who have listened to the entire series so far,

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I'm not sure how many hours it's been, but we're probably getting up toward four, five hours of webcasting now.

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Yeah, we'll ask Algo exactly how many it's been. How would you respond to that?

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How would you respond to that? Because you should be able to respond to that because there is a fundamental error that Catholic Answers made throughout this program that we identified from the beginning.

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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

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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.

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So the oral apostolic preaching is called the word of God. Doesn't that prove the

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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.

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So it's OK. It's look at me. I'm fine. Anyway, so what's the fundamental problem here?

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Well, it was a fundamental problem with the entire assumption. Were the apostles Bible -only

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Christians? What did we say right from the beginning? Sola Scriptura isn't addressing that and doesn't claim that.

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And once again, so often Christians get themselves in a position of defending positions and defending things that they have no business defending.

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We're not defending that the word of God was not spoken because it was.

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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 inscription, the word of God was spoken.

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But what would this actually, what would be required of the really honest, compelling

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Roman Catholic apologist at this point? What would they have to prove for this to actually be relevant?

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They would have to prove that what Paul delivered to the

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Thessalonians was different in substance than what we possess in the

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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

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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.

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There's no evidence of those things, absolute silence. They just simply have to go, well, you know,

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I just, we just, yeah, we believe that. And of course, their scholars don't want to say, yeah, the apostle taught the

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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.

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And they know the Marian dogmas, no, no, and that was not, this all developed over time.

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And so the idea that Paul was actually preaching this Thessalonians, so, you know, this whole thing just doesn't really work because in reality, we've already shown that when

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Paul says word of mouth or a letter from us, he's talking about the one thing of the

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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.

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And so, yes, the apostolic preaching was authoritative.

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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.

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The gospel is the power of God and the 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.

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You don't have a scriptura to be a sola when you have the scripture being given at that time.

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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.

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That's the issue. And unfortunately, that issue did not get addressed.

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So with that having been said, isn't there evidence that the early church fathers used a concept of apostolic tradition?

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Well, they said they did. There are certainly, you can get quotes, and the quotes are not hard to discover if you want to look them up.

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Here's an example of one. From his work against heresies,

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Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyon, died toward the end of the second century, said 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?

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For how should it be if the apostles themselves have not left us writings?

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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?

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And so, it certainly seems to be speaking of tradition as an extra -biblical thing, just as the

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Council of Trent did, just as Carlo Broussard was on Catholic Answers Live.

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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.

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For although the languages of the world are dissimilar, yet the import of the tradition is one and the same.

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So, here's tradition. Isn't this exactly what

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I've been arguing against? Isn't this a parallel transmission of revelational data not found in the

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Scriptures? Well, the problem is,

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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

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God, creator of heaven and earth, announced by the law and the prophets, and one Christ, the

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Son of God. If anyone does not agree to these truths, he despises the companions of the Lord, nay more. He despises

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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.

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And so, here is what tradition is for Irenaeus. It is sub -biblical.

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It is a fundamental, basic, almost creedal assertion that you have to begin with a recognition of the foundational truths of Scripture.

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If you come to the Bible and you ignore their context, you ignore their

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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.

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And this is what so many people to this day do. They ignore all that kind of stuff. Then, you can turn the

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Scriptures into mishmash. It's like reading a believing

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Mormon attempting to write a commentary on the Book of Romans. It just doesn't work.

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Because you cannot make heads or tails out of the Book of Romans if you have

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Joseph Smith's God as your foundation. It just doesn't make any sense.

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It can't be done. That's proven by the fact that Joseph Smith had to make fundamental changes in the text of the

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Book of Romans. Instead of the God who justifies the ungodly, it's the God who does not justify the ungodly.

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When you've got to reverse entire statements showing that Smith had no concept of justification whatsoever, then, there you go.

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That's basically what Irenaeus was saying. When the Gnostics take the

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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

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Apostles, and then say, well, you need to interpret it this way, that they are thoroughly corrupting the faith.

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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.

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Everything in that tradition is directed out of Scripture. It's directed out of Scripture. Now, they're saying, yes, the

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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

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Church is dealing with was Mormonism. Joseph Smith had been born long before he was, but that wasn't the case at all.

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Now, there are other uses of this concept of tradition. Now, before I go a little bit later,

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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.

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But Irenaeus, as far as we can tell, and this is in the, what do we call it, vintage stuff on the blog.

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If you go to vintagestuffataomin .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.

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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, and so they're on the blog somewhere.

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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.

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I have a feeling it'll come up in a search on Irenaeus in the blog.

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As far as I know, and I'm open to correction on this, but no one's actually disputed this for years.

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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.

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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.

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Now, Irenaeus flourishes around 180, may have died as late as 200.

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It might have been a little bit before that, because that's when we see the primary persecution around Leon.

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He dies pretty much before the third century, so he's early on.

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Now, he's not within the first generation who knew the apostles, but he's not too far removed.

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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.

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So, you would think that Irenaeus is so early.

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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.

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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.

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So, you would think if this category of apostolic tradition outside of Scripture is a valid category, what

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Irenaeus said should be the purest example we have. You know what

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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

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Jesus was talking about having seen Abraham saw his day, and remember what the

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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.

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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.

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It was a sort of different perspective. And no one really thinks that Irenaeus was right about that.

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I mean, I don't know anyone who seriously believes that Jesus lived into his 50s.

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Rome certainly doesn't believe that's an apostolic tradition. So isn't it odd that the first time someone says,

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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.

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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?

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That is a question. But then there are other uses of this phrase, apostolic tradition, that again, most of us would agree.

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Hmm. Basil of Caesarea, 330 to 379.

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So you're talking 150 years down the road from the end of Irenaeus' life.

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In his treatise On the Spirit, Basil made the following famous remarks.

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Of the beliefs and practices, whether generally accepted or publicly enjoined, which are preserved in the church, some we possess derived from written teaching.

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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.

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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.

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Well, sounds like he's saying the gospel itself is at stake here. So let's see what he's actually talking about.

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What are these traditions, these unwritten traditions from the apostles?

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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

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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

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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.

37:36

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.

37:47

On what written authority do we do this? Is not our authority silent and mystical tradition?

37:53

Nay, by what written word is the anointing of oil itself taught? And whence comes the custom of baptizing thrice?

38:05

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.

38:17

Basil is talking about traditions with reference to practices and piety. We note with some irony that Rome does not believe

38:23

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?

38:32

Yet these are the practices that Basil defines as being derived from tradition.

38:38

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.

39:12

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

39:40

Yeah, I think there are two debates we have done over the years on the subject of the Apocrypha.

39:48

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.

40:00

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.

40:15

It was about, wow, at least 10 years between them, maybe

40:22

I think a little bit more than that, between those two debates, maybe as much as 15, depending on when the, the

40:32

Machuta debate was one of the last ones we did. So anyway, if you want more in -depth discussion of issues like the

40:39

Apocrypha, and all sorts of stuff like that, then take a look at those debates.

40:47

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

40:56

I'm going to make here in a moment yourselves, but for many, many

41:03

Christians, what I'm currently sending you, you got it?

41:13

It'll probably be the first time you've heard it. And as such, you may need to go back and listen to it.

41:24

The problem is the issue of the canon of Scripture is just not something that we sit around and talk about a lot.

41:40

And when we do, unfortunately, there's just so much misunderstanding, so much tradition, so much stuff out there that even sitting around, and I remember years ago back in seminary, you sit around during one of the breaks, and so what if we found a new letter from Paul, and 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.

42:22

So would we add it to the New Testament? We have to re -translate all their Bibles. And what will we do?

42:28

And stuff like that. Yeah, that happens. But for most

42:33

Christians, you have your

42:38

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.

42:56

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.

43:25

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.

43:51

And being aware of that, of realizing the history, the fact that God has always given

44:01

His word. You look at Jeremiah, and the giving of His revelation, and the scroll being cut up.

44:09

It's always been messy. It's always been God, it's always been

44:15

Emmanuel. Emmanuel is a messy phrase. God with us.

44:22

It's not because God's messy, it's because we are. But unlike the Muslims, we believe

44:29

God has entered into His own creation. So He's been intimately involved with His people from the start.

44:39

And so it shouldn't shock us or surprise us that the word comes to us in that kind of way.

44:46

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.

44:57

It came in what would seem, you know, when that guy carrying the first copy of Romans, which was not written by Paul, was dictated by Paul.

45:08

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.

45:26

It could have been stolen. He could have been, you know, if God wasn't providentially in control of His world,

45:32

He could have been mugged, letters stolen, destroyed, all sorts of stuff like that, right?

45:41

God made His revelation in history. And there is a history as to how those books came together, how they were copied.

45:54

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

46:10

Tanakh, very different transmission methodology. Because the

46:18

Old Testament text given to a particular people in a particular place, it's not really until the

46:27

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.

46:40

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.

46:51

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.

46:58

But the transmission methodology for the

47:03

New Testament and Old Testament, very different from one another. And it took time.

47:13

The text and the canon, they are related, but they must be distinguished from one another. Because we may question a line in the

47:25

Book of Romans without ever raising the issue of whether Romans as a result is canon or not canon.

47:32

That's not a question for the vast majority of folks. So you can have an entire group of people that fully accept the

47:42

Book of Romans as canon scripture who will disagree over particular reading within the Book of Romans. So canon and text are related, but they have to be distinguished from one another.

47:57

So with that in mind, when we talk about the canon of scripture, almost all books you'll pick up, except the ones we recommended to you by just one of the brightest lights of our age,

48:17

Dr. Michael Kruger, President RTS Charlotte, his books on canon.

48:25

I've told you the story. I'll just briefly mention it for those of you that are new. I almost feel like saying, hey,

48:35

Algo, could you call in and tell the story? Because the old voice,

48:42

I don't know why I talk so loudly when I'm in here. I could talk very quietly.

48:49

And Richard would just simply turn the volume up and all would be well. And then my throat wouldn't bother me.

48:57

It's just really dry. It has dried out, which makes it really nice. It's like 96 outside, but when there's zero humidity, it does get to you.

49:08

Anyway, years ago, sometime after 1993, because it was

49:16

May of 1993, I got on a bike. And I've never been the same since. Well, I'd written before then, but I mean, that's when

49:26

I really seriously started cycling. I would ride and listen to things even back then, not nearly as safely as I can now, because back then you had a big old cassette player.

49:40

And yeah, sometimes it would eat the tape, just like all cassette players eventually did. And you had to wear in -ear headphones.

49:50

And now I have the bone conduction headphones, so you can actually hear what's going on around you and still listen to stuff. It's great.

49:56

If you haven't tried out the bone conduction headphones, you're missing something. It's really cool.

50:01

I've introduced a number of people to it. Great stuff. Anyway, I went out on a ride.

50:08

I even remember what the jersey I was wearing that day. Isn't that weird? I can't remember. My short -term memory is gone, but I've got that one down.

50:16

I remember where I lived, what route I was on, pretty much where I was, northbound on 51st Avenue. And I had been listening to Scott Hahn, Jerry Matitix.

50:26

I had been listening to the Roman Catholic apologists, and one of their biggest arguments was canon, canon, canon, canon.

50:31

You are dependent upon us for the canon. And somewhere northbound on 51st

50:38

Avenue, all of a sudden, I figured it out. Now, don't get me wrong.

50:45

I'm sure because in later years, reading back through some stuff from Warfield, I could see, uh -huh, uh -huh, yeah, that's the conclusion

50:57

I've come to. Had I read that and it was just starting to come together, I don't know.

51:03

All of us, we're putting stuff together. We've read from many different sources and things like that.

51:10

But the conclusion I came to certainly seemed rather revolutionary to me.

51:20

And I am very thankful that we do have folks like Michael Kruger and others along with him.

51:27

I don't want to make it sound like it's just him, who are pointing out the same things that I came to understand that day on that bike ride.

51:37

It's so important at the time that I turned around, pedaled straight back home, because I was worried that if I kept going,

51:43

I would forget. Because sometimes, you know, you have a close call with a car or something like that, and everything you've been thinking about just goes whoop, and I'd be like, oh, no.

51:54

So I went back home, wrote out a note that was sufficient enough to make sure that I didn't forget it.

52:00

Wish I still had it, might somewhere, who knows. And then went back out to finish the ride. But when you read almost any book out there on the subject of the canon of Scripture today, it is going to approach the canon of Scripture from, first and foremost, historically.

52:21

So in other words, looking backwards, it's going to say, okay, here's what this early church father said, and we can sort of gather from this early church father that he had this much in the

52:36

New Testament, but didn't seem to have this. And you've got the Muratorian fragment, and there's disputes over the date of that, and there's even disputes over, you know, what's being referred to here, the naming of books and things like that.

52:50

But it's pretty much most of the New Testament, and it's about 175, 180, and some people place it later, and blah, blah, blah, blah.

53:01

And eventually they developed this idea of the list of criteria.

53:12

They use this criteria and that criteria, and so it had to be apostolic, and it had to be associated with one of the apostles, and so Mark was associated with Peter, and all that kind of stuff.

53:28

And it gives the impression that there was this set of rules, and the church sort of looked at each book and said, well, okay, or no.

53:47

And there was this process going on. And one of the more famous statements that still must be dealt with today comes from R .C.

54:04

Sproul, where he says that the canon is a fallible listing of infallible books.

54:14

And just like how the Roman Catholics love to jump on the alleged

54:19

Luther statement about the dunghill and the nature of justification, whether Luther actually said it or not is another issue, but just they love to jump on that.

54:30

They love to jump on that. You can't have a fallible, you need to have an infallible listing of infallible books in the function.

54:36

And of course, I then turn around, and you got that when? Yeah, I happen to know, April of 1546.

54:43

So the church was sitting around going, hell no, until 1546. No, obviously not.

54:51

Sproul's point in calling the canon a fallible listing of infallible books is to avoid the idea of an extra -biblical, post -canonical revelation from God, as if he sends down the

55:07

New Testament books in one way, and then down floats the canon, accompanied by angels and written on golden plates or something.

55:20

It also reflects, Sproul's words reflect accurately, the attitudes of the

55:28

Jewish, I'm sorry, the early church fathers themselves, who never had the idea that they had the right capacity or ability to determine the canon.

55:42

Because they recognize canon reflects something that God has done, not something that we do.

55:48

We're just trying to recognize what God has done. We don't have any authority to create anything like this.

55:58

And so, what finally struck me, first and foremost, was that the canon is a theological thing.

56:13

It's a theological thing. Think about it. What is it that we're talking about when we talk about the canon?

56:19

We're talking about a recognition of the parameters of purposeful divine revelation, that which is theanoustos.

56:29

The canon, in essence, tells us that there are some things that are theanoustos, and then there are things that are not theanoustos.

56:39

So, it's theological. And yet, almost all books on the subject minimize, especially modern books other than Dr.

56:50

Kruger's, minimize horribly this idea of the theological element, of the fact that the canon is assuming certain theological truths, that is, that God has spoken, that there is such a thing as revelation.

57:05

And hence, separates the canon out from revelation itself, inspiration, and the purpose of the giving of divine revelation.

57:16

God had an intention in giving scripture. So, here's some...

57:27

Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, I'm...

57:34

Really, no, no, no. Dumb thing.

57:43

Really needs a better interface. It really, really does. So, first, what is the canon?

57:54

Canon, and please, especially when you're on Facebook, realize it only has one end in the middle, because the one with two goes boom.

58:05

Canon means a rule or standard, kanon in Greek, against which something is judged or measured.

58:11

The term came to mean an authoritative listing of books or works. The Protestant canon contains 66 books.

58:19

The Roman Catholic, 74, depending on how exactly you play with Belle and the Dragon and weird stuff like that.

58:27

There are some other canons, very small canons, that we won't go into right now.

58:38

The Protestant canon, the Old Testament, is simply the Jewish canon without the addition of the apocryphal books.

58:44

Now, again, I'm not going to go into details on this. You can go into this in the debates, in the

58:52

Beckwith book, in Bill Webster's book on this subject, but I think we have very successfully demonstrated that the

59:04

Jewish canon was what is called the Protestant canon, that the apocryphal books were not accepted by the

59:12

Jewish people as scripture, and that there was a long tradition.

59:20

Basically, the more an early church father knew about the

59:25

Old Testament, Hebrew, the Jewish people, the less likely he is to accept the apocryphal books and vice versa.

59:34

So the more ignorant the early church father was of the Jews, of the

59:40

Old Testament, the more likely he was to accept the apocryphal books as being scriptural. And there were disagreements.

59:47

There was the famous argument between Augustine and Jerome on the canonicity of the apocryphal books.

59:54

Jerome rejected them, Augustine accepted them, but Augustine primarily accepted them because he thought they were a part of the

01:00:01

Jewish canon, and he was wrong about that. So he had bad information, and on the basis of that bad information came to bad conclusions.

01:00:11

So you can look at more on that. I want to get to this part. How is the canon determined?

01:00:19

A vital distinction, in fact, is often lost when this topic is discussed. God creates canon by inspiring some writings and not others.

01:00:35

Canon, then, is a part of Revelation itself. It is an artifact of Revelation, not an object of Revelation itself.

01:00:43

Now, that is so outside of the realm of most people's thought that you just have to stop or I'm wasting my breath and your time.

01:00:54

This is what I realized that day. This is a simplification of a lot of what

01:01:01

Dr. Kruger has developed in his books. I explain this much more fully in Scripture alone, but you grasp hold of this and it changes the entire field, changes the whole area.

01:01:18

Illustration makes sense. It's personal. My first book, surprisingly, was on Roman Catholicism.

01:01:27

Most people figured it would have been Letters to a Mormon Elder because I've been dealing with Mormonism since the early 1980s.

01:01:35

But my first book was on Roman Catholicism. Actually, my first two books,

01:01:41

Fatal Flaw and Answers to Catholic Claims. Originally, they were one book.

01:01:50

Answers to Catholic Claims was originally Appendices as it was written.

01:01:55

Then we realized this doesn't really work right. It goes way outside the thesis of the first.

01:02:03

Let's make it a separate book. So that's what we did. Now, as soon as the

01:02:09

Fatal Flaw was written, maybe you could argue as soon as that first box showed up, and I remember that to this day.

01:02:17

Any author is going to remember their first book when it arrives. A canon of my books came into existence.

01:02:32

I did not have to, at that time, open Ventura Publisher on my old 8088 computer and open a text file called

01:02:45

Canon of James White's Writings and type something out for a canon to come into existence.

01:02:54

How did it come into existence? By my writing. Who infallibly knew it?

01:03:01

Well, just me. Now, when there was only one, the number of people who could have had infallible knowledge of it probably could have been a little bit wider.

01:03:11

But the fact is that I was the only one who knew.

01:03:16

I was the only one that was there in the room every time I wrote every single word of it and all the rest of that stuff.

01:03:24

So the canon came into existence because I had now written one book, but I obviously had not written all books.

01:03:33

And so the canon was determined by my activity of writing.

01:03:41

And then when Answers to Catholic Claims came out, the canon automatically changed. And again,

01:03:46

I did not have to announce this. I did not. And I was the only one that had truly infallible knowledge of it.

01:03:53

And then when Letters to Mormon Elder came out, the canon keeps expanding. So when

01:04:00

I talk about canon as an artifact of revelation, what I'm saying is when

01:04:07

God gives scripture, other books have existed down through history.

01:04:14

Man's been a writer from early on. But once God moved in a special way to make revelation through Moses in what we call the

01:04:27

Pentateuch, some people might even theorize Job's earlier than that, but we don't know.

01:04:34

God does. The point is that the canon came into existence automatically.

01:04:45

Now, it would not be the general knowledge of the human race, and truly when it comes to the canon of the

01:04:55

Tanakh, the Old Testament, there was no reason for the vast majority of the human race to have any knowledge of it at all or care about it whatsoever in light of the purposes of God at that time.

01:05:14

And historically, no angels came down from heaven and said the book of Esther is and this book isn't.

01:05:22

I was seeing stuff. When I started mentioning Sola Scriptura, there was some stuff on Facebook, and immediately people started going, well, you need to talk about Esther and the

01:05:32

Wisdom of Solomon. Well, Wisdom of Solomon is an intertestamental book clearly known by the

01:05:42

New Testament writers. In fact, some of you know that Graham Codrington, who

01:05:48

I debated down Johannesburg on homosexuality, he tries to get around Romans 1 by saying that Romans 1 is drawn from the

01:05:59

Wisdom of Solomon and represents Judaism of that time, and Paul spang the rest of his book arguing against Romans 1.

01:06:08

Never heard that one before, huh? Well, there's only like two people who have ever developed that idea. It's wild and wacky, but it's out there.

01:06:16

If you read the Wisdom of Solomon, there are a lot of conceptual parallels, but in fact, if you read carefully,

01:06:24

Paul is contradicting some of the fundamental things the Wisdom of Solomon says in Romans 1.

01:06:31

But anyway, there is no question that the apostolic writers, that the apostles themselves, were familiar with other books outside of what we would call the

01:06:42

Tanakh. The question is, did they view any of these books as Scripture? And the

01:06:47

Wisdom of Solomon was never laid up in the temple. Esther was. And Jesus held men accountable to what was found in the

01:06:57

Scriptures, and yet there's no arguments whatsoever in the Gospels between Jesus, the

01:07:03

Pharisees, even the Sadducees. And there's questions about what the Sadduceean canon actually looked like as to what is and what is not

01:07:11

Scripture. So, the canon, when the bath kol, the voice of God, ceased amongst the

01:07:25

Israelites with Malachi, and they recognized this, the canon was fixed at that point when

01:07:35

God gave the last words to the last prophet. Canon was fixed in God's mind.

01:07:42

Now, the question that must be asked is, does God have a purpose in leading his people to understand the extent of what he has and has not inspired?

01:07:54

And the answer is, yes, he does. We just read in 1 Corinthians, I believe it's chapter 10, where the

01:08:05

Apostle Paul is specifically making reference to events in God's redemptive history with the

01:08:12

Old Testament people. And he says, these things were written for our edification, for our enlightenment, and our understanding.

01:08:19

God had a purpose in revealing these things. And so, God extends supernatural effort to inspire.

01:08:31

Makes perfect sense. He's going to extend supernatural effort to then preserve what he has inspired.

01:08:39

Now, how he does that is an area of argumentation that I believe is primarily historical fact versus tradition, but there are differences amongst people.

01:08:50

He's going to preserve it, and then he's going to make sure his people understand it. And the fact is, by 200 years before Christ, the books that I have in my

01:09:00

Old Testament are laid up in the temple in Jerusalem and considered to make the hands dirty, that is, that they are holy.

01:09:07

How did that happen? Well, there weren't any infallible councils. There weren't any votes.

01:09:13

There wasn't anything like that. The Council of Jamnia is after the time of Christ, and that wasn't really a quote -unquote council.

01:09:19

It was a discussion, but it wasn't a council. It's so often blown up into things that it really was not intended to be.

01:09:28

But we have a process over about 200 years that only becomes more clear and firm in the following 200 years, up to the time of Christ, that allows

01:09:41

Jesus to hold men accountable to what is and what is not in Scripture. And this leads us to something else, and it's pretty obvious I'm not going to get to any political discussion today, probably much to Rich's enjoyment and thankfulness, but this is far more important than the foolishness of last evening.

01:10:04

This leads to an incident that took place in 1993, after the two debates we had at Boston College with Jerry Matitix.

01:10:13

There was a miscommunication. I was informed that the radio program on WEZE the following Monday had been canceled.

01:10:21

We were specifically told while we were at Boston College that while we had been scheduled, Jerry Matitix and I had been scheduled to do a follow -up program on that following Monday that had been canceled.

01:10:35

Well, not sure how that happened, but it wasn't. And so we were driving around, and we turned on WEZE, and they're going, we don't know where James White is.

01:10:43

And it's like, what? And so we were racing back to my host's home, and we got a phone called in and did the rest of the program on the phone.

01:10:52

I even have a picture. I've got it on my phone somewhere, actually. I have a picture that was taken by my host of me.

01:11:01

You remember Kelly? I forget who it was, because she was with me on that trip. Sitting on the side of the bed doing that radio program with Jerry Matitix.

01:11:12

And Jerry was still in full -on debate mode, as I think Jerry always is. I'm not sure how his –

01:11:20

I think if there was a thing called sainthood, Mrs. Matitix deserves it more than anybody else does.

01:11:26

But anyway. And so he still wanted to go after the issue of the canon.

01:11:32

And so we were discussing it. And a question came across my mind.

01:11:39

And I'm not going to call it some type of revelation, because it wasn't. But it has become such a famous question that I've actually had people send me recordings of Roman Catholic programs that call it the white question.

01:11:56

And this is the question that I asked Jerry on that program that day.

01:12:02

I said, Jerry, how is it that a believing

01:12:08

Jewish person 50 years before the coming of Christ could know that Isaiah and 2

01:12:16

Chronicles were scripture? That's what

01:12:22

I asked. And we got dead air.

01:12:28

Now, I've done radio all my life. I did radio starting in high school.

01:12:34

I'm not talking about theological radio. I mean, I played big band music on KWAO -FM -106 .3,

01:12:40

the home of the great entertainers in Sun City, Arizona. And dead air is not a good thing.

01:12:48

Dead air is a bad thing. And it only takes a second before the host of the program,

01:12:56

Janine Graff, was her name. So I stepped in and said, well, we need to take a break.

01:13:04

So she took a break to give Jerry, because Jerry's very rarely left out words.

01:13:09

But I knew what was going on, because he's running the possible answers through his mind, and none of them work.

01:13:19

And even when we came back from the break, he did not have an answer, because there really isn't any consistent answer from the

01:13:28

Roman Catholic perspective. Now, here's what's been offered over the years. Well, the only way that the believing

01:13:35

Jew 50 years before Christ could have knowledge of the canon would have been by reference to the

01:13:40

Urim and Thummim, which were sort of the holy dice in the breastplate of the high priest.

01:13:48

So I guess what they're saying is you could go, Genesis, yes, all right.

01:13:56

Tobit, oh, man, snake eyes. I don't know exactly how it would work, but that doesn't go over with most folks.

01:14:06

Because different Jews could go to the same high priest and roll the dice and maybe get different answers on that one.

01:14:14

See, they don't want to say that you'd go to the Old Testament magisterium, because they know something.

01:14:22

At least the better -read Roman Catholic apologists know something. The Roman Catholic magisterium's understanding of the canon was different than Rome's.

01:14:28

In other words, what Rome defined as the Old Testament canon is not what the Jews had defined as the

01:14:34

Old Testament canon. So there's a conflict. So you can't say you can't go there, because that now means that God had two infallibly contradictory statements as to the canon.

01:14:51

There was no pope. There was no magisterial statement. But they can't say, well, he couldn't know, though that's functionally what they need to say, because the whole argument that Rome is always making is, well, without us, you can't know what

01:15:06

Scripture is. But you didn't give us an infallible canon of the Bible until 1546.

01:15:15

And every single foundational Christian doctrine, well, from the Roman perspective,

01:15:20

I guess, except for all the dogmas that have come out since 1546, which would pretty much only be papal infallibility, immaculate conception, bodily assumption, everything else that defines the faith had been defined long before that without an allegedly infallible canon having been defined by Rome.

01:15:42

So how did Jesus hold men accountable to Scripture when the therefore appropriate response of any of Jesus's opponents would have been,

01:15:54

I didn't know that was Scripture. So the white question, as it was called by somebody else, gives an illustration of the reality that you do not need to have some kind of supernatural revelation in the sense of extra -canonical revelation, angels coming down from heaven's golden plates, clouds in the sky, whatever it might be, laying out for you the canon of Scripture.

01:16:28

God did not work that way with the Old Testament. He worked in a process that basically we can see about 200 years in was pretty much done, 400 years in, completely done.

01:16:40

And isn't it fascinating? When we look at the New Testament, Muratorian fragments about 200 years in and Athanasius' 39th

01:16:49

Festal Letter, not quite 400 in, same time period, same type of thing. No angels, no writing in the sky, and yet seemed to work for Jesus in the

01:17:00

Old Testament, and seems to be what God did in the New as well. So it takes us back to the consideration here.

01:17:10

Canon then is an artifact of Revelation. It comes about automatically due to the reality of Revelation.

01:17:19

This one consideration alone completely changes the nature of argumentation one must use to respond to the claims regarding the canon.

01:17:27

Why? Because man's knowledge of canon is passive, not active.

01:17:37

Man or church does not create canon but seeks to recognize it.

01:17:43

Now please understand what I mean by passive and active. When I use those terms, what

01:17:48

I'm saying is, when you learn something, then you are passively taking in knowledge.

01:17:58

When you define something, then you're actively doing something that creates an item of knowledge.

01:18:05

The church does not get together in a council and go, all in favor of Matthew, say aye.

01:18:11

Aye. Passes. Matthew canonized. Boom. That would be an act of the church creating something.

01:18:19

That's not what happened. That's just historically not what took place. Even the early writers, even

01:18:25

Augustine, the church receives the canon, does not create the canon. And so man's knowledge of canon is passive, not active.

01:18:37

Man or church does not create canon but seeks to recognize it. Hence we have two views of canon, which we will designate canon 1 and canon 2.

01:18:45

Canon 1 is the canon as created by God's active inspiration. And it doesn't require a secondary revelation or something.

01:18:55

It's just like I said, as soon as I wrote a book, canon came into existence. As soon as God inspires, canon comes into existence.

01:19:02

Canon 2 is the canon as passively recognized by God's people, led by God's spirit over time and beyond geographical boundaries.

01:19:12

This is important because when we do look at historical works on the subject, what bothers a lot of people is that you can find books such as The Shepherd of Hermas or The Gospel of Barnabas or even the

01:19:31

Didache that are seemingly viewed as canon, as scripture, in limited geographical areas, but never across the

01:19:48

Christian world. And so it's almost a dead giveaway that those books are most popular where they originated.

01:20:00

But when they go outside the area in which they originated, people are like, what's that? What's this all about?

01:20:10

And so when we speak of the work of God's spirit, I think one of the things that's important to recognize is that it's outside of geographical boundaries.

01:20:20

In other words, the canon of scripture was not created by Rome. It wasn't what was popular in Rome that then becomes determinative for everybody else.

01:20:31

It's beyond geographical boundaries. Disputes about canon 2 do not in any way destroy the existence of canon 1 any more than doctrinal disputes prove there is no objective revelation of doctrinal truth.

01:20:45

So in other words, we can recognize, we do not have to panic about the reality of the fact that history is quite clear in revealing to us that there were disputes about certain books.

01:21:04

When I give my New Testament reliability presentation, I point out that the book of the

01:21:11

New Testament for which we have the fewest manuscripts is the book of Revelation.

01:21:17

We even have fewer manuscripts of the book of Revelations. We have none. Anyway, so why is that?

01:21:29

Well, it's pretty obvious because the book of Revelation struggled for acceptance into the canon and was rejected by many people.

01:21:43

And some people are like, oh, don't tell me things like that.

01:21:49

Why not? First of all, it's historically true. If you believe Christianity is true, then you can't be queasy about what's true historically.

01:21:57

But even beyond that, aren't you sort of glad that the church was not sitting around going, hey, you know, we really like these books about seven -headed monsters and things like that.

01:22:11

Let's have some more. Anybody got some more books about beasts and dragons and seven -headed and ten -headed monsters and trumpets and bowls and apocalypses and blood up to bridles and stuff like that?

01:22:25

I mean, it is an unusual book. And so there were questions. Is it really associated with John?

01:22:31

Is it really his style? Is it really apostolic? I'm glad there were people who went, that's a good thing.

01:22:39

It's a very good thing. That also resulted in a very, very, very different manuscript tradition for the

01:22:48

Book of Revelation. I mean, all bets are off on that one. When you look at the transmission lines for anything else and then you look at Revelation, totally different, totally different.

01:23:04

And that's one place where textual criticism and canon run into each other. And I'll be honest with you, I think it's a real problem for the ecclesiastical text or the

01:23:12

Byzantine text, folks, because if you know the text of Revelation at all, you know that even the

01:23:18

Byzantine manuscript tradition just goes all over the place when it comes to Revelation.

01:23:25

I mean, it's just... and really begs the question on a lot of things.

01:23:32

Anyway, so canon two, there can be disputes about.

01:23:39

And there have been disputes about. And within what Rome would call its own history and tradition,

01:23:47

Cardinal Cayetan. Cardinal Cayetan wrote and was considered a leading scholar in the days of Luther.

01:24:02

And in his writings before the Council of Trent, he specifically rejected the apocryphal books.

01:24:10

Gregory the Great rejected the apocryphal books. And so there was a line of people going all the way back,

01:24:24

Jerome and Miletus Sardis and all these people that rejected the apocryphal books.

01:24:32

And then there were those who accepted, especially because of Augustine. And they sort of existed side by side all the way up until the

01:24:41

Reformation solidified this situation. Because Rome decided to use, abuse, misuse, primarily one text in the

01:24:58

Apocrypha in support of prayers to the dead and indulgences. And Luther said, pfft, pfft, to that.

01:25:07

And so then you had a solidifying of the positions. And Rome adopting the position when an honest

01:25:19

Roman Catholic historian, we'll have to admit, that existed side by side and even popes had held the other perspective.

01:25:25

So, there you go. So, there are disputes. It does not mean that Canon won.

01:25:34

It does not mean that the Canon as the artifact of Revelation is in any way impacted by man's disagreements over things.

01:25:46

But it does, I do believe this very strongly. I don't believe that there are any other inspired books.

01:25:53

And I believe that what we have is exactly what God intended us to have. And I believe that on the basis of the fact that God put forth the effort to inspire these words for a purpose.

01:26:08

God is a God of purpose. He's building His church. It is His intention that His people have

01:26:15

His Revelation. And therefore, He has made sure that we have what He has inspired for us.

01:26:20

I just don't understand how the connectedness between inspiration and the purpose of inspiration can be broken.

01:26:36

And so, when I agree with Dr. Sproul, many people misunderstand why he put it the way he put it.

01:26:48

But he's putting it the only way we can put it. And that is from the perspective of Canon 2.

01:26:56

But I can affirm Canon 1 theologically just as I affirm

01:27:03

Canon 2 historically. And once you see that distinction, which is necessary, it changes everything.

01:27:14

It changes everything. So, again, did

01:27:19

I actually read this from Warfield, and I just subconsciously didn't realize it, and it just hit me one day because my heart rate was really high?

01:27:39

I don't know. I don't know. But if that's helpful to you, thanks be to the

01:27:45

Lord for that. It's probably best that I spent more time making sure that we covered the

01:27:53

Canon issues than to really—I'm not saying that what's going on politically is not important, but these issues will be important.

01:28:04

First of all, this program is not just watched in the United States. And secondly, two years from now, no matter who's been sitting in the

01:28:13

White House and no matter what they've been doing to either thoroughly undercut the

01:28:20

American system of government, promote ungodliness, steal our liberties, whatever else it might be, we're still going to need to know what

01:28:27

Scripture is. We're still going to need to know what we're standing on. And so if I feel like it later on in the week, maybe we'll still do that.

01:28:39

Because a lot of people have been asking, and what I'm going to tell everybody is, look, this is me as a private citizen and as a follower of Christ.

01:28:52

I don't make any claims to be some kind of political guru or anything else.

01:28:59

I'll just share with you conclusions I've come to. I shared some stuff on Facebook, and a bunch of people are going, yeah, that's exactly what

01:29:08

I've been thinking about. And maybe respond to some of the stuff that's been said over the past couple days.

01:29:15

We'll get around to it, but I just want to make sure that people could really come to this series and get a good introduction to what

01:29:25

Sola Scriptura is all about. And I really, I cannot overemphasize how important I think this is.

01:29:33

Share it with your friends, but especially for you, be ready to respond when

01:29:39

Roman Catholicism or others come knocking with their attacks upon.

01:29:46

Yes? I wanted to remind the audience, like I did on Twitter, that on YouTube there is a section under Conferences, the

01:29:57

Authority of Scripture Conference from 2005, really dovetails into what you've been saying here.

01:30:03

And in fact, there is actually a section where you do a presentation on the inspiration, canon, historicity of the

01:30:11

Bible. But there are presentations there from James Renahan, as well as Tom Askell.

01:30:17

And it wraps up with the debate with John Dominic Crossan, and we even tacked in the debate that took place on the ship afterwards on the resurrection with you,

01:30:30

Dr. Renahan, against John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg. So I just wanted to add that in.

01:30:37

Okay, yeah. It ain't the first time we've been talking about it, but the fact of the matter is there's so many people that watch this program and listen to it now that had no earthly idea we were around in 2005, or 1995, or 1985.

01:30:53

And in fact, many of you yourselves were not around in 1985. And it's good to have you with us.

01:31:00

So anyway, probably Thursday we'll be back again with the dividing line, and maybe that's when we'll have our little pre -election chat.