Sola Scriptura, Canon, and Rome: Dr. Michael Kruger on the Dividing Line

Welcome to The Dividing Line, a special edition today. What we're going to do here at the beginning is I have invited Dr. Michael Kruger on the program. He'll be joining us at the top of the hour. I had contacted him back in November.

On October 31st, if you want to go to the Catholic Answers archives, October 31st, I was driving home, heard a phone call and discussion on Catholic Answers Live that in light of Dr. Kruger's work on the subject of the canon, I wanted to invite him on so that he might respond to what was said in that particular 20-minute long phone call.

But to give you the proper context, we wanted to play that phone call for you so you could see why we wanted to address this vitally important issue. So before the program begins, here is the phone call from Catholic Answers Live that we will be reviewing and responding to.

Sure. All right. It's Larry in St. Louis, Missouri on 1460 AM. Hello, Larry.

Well, hello, and welcome. I'm not welcome, but good evening, Patrick and Father. Thank you. Would you call yesterday, Larry?

I did. Okay. I remember you. I'm sorry we didn't get to you with Jimmy in the first hour. I didn't want to have his answer truncated, so I'm delighted that you called back.

Okay. Well, yesterday I called with a simple question, especially this time of year, where did Luther go wrong? And you invited me back to answer the question, why it is you guys aren't Lutherans, and boy, I can't think of a good reason.

Oh, wait a minute. No, wait a minute. You asked me the question, why am I not Catholic, right? Correct. Well, that's a good question, and I thought about it, and, you know, it's kind of tough because depending on how you approach it, you can get into the weeds real quickly.

So I guess I have sort of a two-pronged answer. First is that as a Lutheran, and as a, in particular, of the Missouri Synod, everything needful I have, and that is to say that when I, say, just when I go to church, at church we hear the Word of God, we hear, you know, the Old Testament reading, perhaps a psalm, and the Gospel, and New Testament.

We have a communion, we receive the body and blood of Christ, we, you know, I was, as an adult, 25 years old, I was baptized, and God gave me the gift of His Spirit. And so, yeah, I mean, so that, you know, all those things, and, well, all those things are, you know, really what I need.

So then, to flip the other side, and the only one thing I would sort of bring up is rather than sort of, you know, talk about, you know, something we might have a difference on, you know, that sort of, to me, is more of an effect than a cause, I think the one issue that would keep me from the Catholic Church as a primary reason is the question of Scripture and authority.

I see that Scripture ultimately is the authority, and I would not include, say, you know, church teaching, or church history, or the tradition, or, and of course, you know, a big thing with the Luther was the power and primacy of the Pope.

Okay, well, Larry, before we go into too many batches of weeds, you don't hold the soul of Scripture, right? Pardon me? Do you hold the soul of Scripture? Absolutely, yes.

Where do you find that in Scripture? Well, here's, it's real simple. You know, just like you guessed it the other day, the word Bible is not in the Bible, so here's where I would base that on. We believe that Scripture is inspired by God.

It's what He chose to, for us Christians, to read, to understand, and we also believe that Scripture interprets Scripture, so there's really no need for...

Larry, if I may, I'm just the host, Fr. Efesio is the guest, but before I hand it to Tom, where do you get the idea that Scripture interprets Scripture? Is that principle found in Scripture?

Well, the word monotheist isn't found in Scripture either, but that principle is there. Is the principle there? Well, I think it's intrinsic. It's intrinsic to it, of course. Here would be the reasoning.

God, the Creator, spoke to people, to the writers, and He gave them a message, and, you know, no one would believe that He is of one mind and has sort of the same direction all the way through, so... So, inherently, Scripture is as a unit in task, and, you know, these are God's words, so...

Right. I would... Yeah. Okay. So, anyway. That's the one point, though, that I would... Well, the authority question... That's the primary thing.

Father, I'm sure you'd agree. The question of authority is the first domino, isn't it? That's a very foundational idea. It is.

Larry... Let me in here, Patrick. Yeah, go ahead, Father. You could be every day. Enter in. Go ahead. First, two things, Larry, to begin with. One, I want to offer my condolences, not because you're a Lutheran, but because you're a St. Louisan.

I was kind of pulling for the Cardinals last night, and it was pretty miserable, not only to lose, but to play so poorly. Well, there's something you need to know. I moved here from Chicago about 11 months ago.

I'm actually a Cubs fan. I see. Oh, nice. A Cubs fan.

Nice. So, double condolences, Larry. All right. I'm glad you weighed in, Father.

The second thing is, this has been a longer discussion than we normally have on Catholic Answers, but I think it's a good one, because it's a very foundational one. The second thing I was going to say, Larry, is that you clearly respect Patrick and Catholic Answers, and we respect you, and I think that's right.

We should, because we're fellow Christians. And because we all accept Jesus as our Savior, we all accept Scripture as a norm for our lives, we have an obligation to strive for unity. I mean, we know that Jesus said that we should be one, that He and the Father are one, and you and I, Larry, aren't that one yet, because we have some disagreements on the authority issue.

Right. So, we need to fight about this. I don't want to say fight. I don't mean we need to put the dukes up, but we need to try to convince each other. Yeah, we need to try to convince each other, we need to try to listen to the arguments.

All the while, with mutual respect, and in our country at this time, locking arms on all the issues that we share in common, like pro-life and supporting marriage and the family and that, we've got to be arm-in-arm brothers in Christ on that.

And at the same time, we really have to try and find out what the truth is, because both the Lutherans and the Catholics can't be right on all issues, because we disagree on some. So, let's take that key issue.

You talked about the authority of Scripture, and Scripture being intrinsic to Scripture, and that Scripture is a unit. Well, let's just take, historically now, I'm not talking about anything theological, just historical, what we call the New Testament.

I mean, it's not a unit in one sense. It is because the Holy Spirit inspired it all, but there's 27 different books in the New Testament, and they weren't all together at the same time. In fact, there was no such thing as a unit until about the 4th century, almost the 5th century.

And you may be aware of this, Larry, but I mean, during the early period after Christ, when there were no written documents at first, then gradually there were written documents. Paul's letters came first, probably, and then some Gospels and some other letters.

They were circuiting all around the Mediterranean, in Ephesus, you know, in Antioch, in Jerusalem, and even Rome, but they weren't together as a unit. And there were a lot of other documents that were floating around, which today we call apocryphal, the Gospel of St. Thomas, the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of James, and so on.

So, the only reason that we have a book we can buy in the store called the New Testament is because someone decided those were the ones who were inspired. And who was that someone? As a matter of fact, it was the successors of the Apostles who met in council who decided these books are the inspired ones, and these other ones are not.

So, if we are going to call that collection of books the New Testament and call it a unit, we have to accept the fact that it wouldn't be a unit unless these particular men in apostolic succession had agreed they were one book.

So, my problem is, honestly, with Protestants, is how can you accept the authority of the New Testament, leave the Old Testament out for now, without accepting the authority of the bishops who were the ones that constituted the New Testament?

Well, yeah, they, and I fully agree with everything you just said in terms of the process and how it happened. Larry?

Yes. I think this is such a valuable call, I'm willing to put you on hold and just carry through into the second segment. Would that be okay? I'm looking at my enemy, the clock here, and I have to take a pause, but I do want to say thanks for the call, Larry.

Bye! Do you want to keep the conversation going?

Hey, wait a minute. You're giving too much time to think about this.

Well, you know, there's method to the madness. That's okay. We'll give him a handicap. We'll give him a handicap. That's okay. Larry the Caller is actually a Cubs fan in St. Louis, talking to a Cardinals fan in San Francisco about a World Series that was won by Boston.

Welcome to the Ecumenical Church. 1 -888 -31-TRUTH. That's the number. This is Catholic Answers Live. Fr. Joseph Fess here, the founder and chief editor of Ignatius Press is the guest. Their fine website is Ignatius .com.

This is the edition of the Table of Contents, right, from Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Romans, and so on, all the way to Revelation. You have these 27 books. How did they get collected? Who decided?

These are inspired. These are God's Word. These other ones that are in circulation, they ain't. Do you see the point, Larry, that only an authority set up by Christ would be able to adjudicate that because they didn't come down like a Star Trek beam altogether in one book.

Does that make sense, Larry? Yes and no.

I'm concerned about this concept that the authority had to do this. Certainly, let's think about how these books were decided. They were decided based primarily on objective reasons. For example, say, the book of Thomas.

Clearly, it's a Gnostic publication. And again, I'm... Oh, clear, but who's to say that Jesus wasn't a Gnostic? Hold on, hold on, hold on. All right. And then the quick next question, or some of the questions that are asked about each of these writings is, who wrote it?

When was it written? So the question becomes, how valid are the authors if we know who they are? That kind of thing. So there's objective decisions that have to be made. And, you know, the church fathers.

And by the way, kind of an underlying theme here is that you're connected to them, but I'm not. And I would dispute that, but that's kind of getting in the weeds again. But the church fathers and the council did look at these things, and that's how they made those decisions.

Of course, we would take that very carefully. And so I have no problem with that. The question is, Larry... Okay, Larry, let's stop there for a second. Let's take it piece by piece here. You're saying that they made the decision on an objective basis, and that's true.

They did. But if they had no authority to make the decision, then we could undo it now. We could say, well, gosh, we actually think that the Gospel of Thomas is not so gnostic, and it really fits in well.

And the Gospel of James has some stuff about Jesus we didn't get elsewhere. We should include that. Why would our decision be any worse or less authorized than the people who made it back there? I mean, if they had no authority to make a decision that's based objectively, now we have more knowledge.

We have, you know, more exegetical knowledge, more historical knowledge. We can make a better decision. So let's cut out. I mean, as Luther said, let's cut out the letter of James. It's a letter of straw.

Right. I mean, well, if that's the case, then we don't have a New Testament. Right. Well... If that's the case, we don't have a New Testament. Essentially, the church fathers, those men who were central to the structure of the church, then they, you know, I mean, these are the people who were the church, who were the authorities of the church.

Well, who gave them authority? They weren't the authorities. Who gave them authority for that? They were authoritative. I mean, I can call myself a Christian because I've been baptized. But I mean, I just can't call myself a bishop.

I can't call myself a father of the church or an authority of the church. Quite frankly, I mean, I think there's a subtle claim here that, you know, that because you're half of the Catholic denomination, that you have some sort of special privilege over and above other Christians.

So, for example, you know what, over a thousand years ago, the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church split. And I think they would argue that, no, you don't have that exclusive claim. So that's the issue.

I mean, there's sort of an objective way in which it was done, people of goodwill.

Larry, the people of goodwill were the Pope and the bishops in union with him at the councils of Hippo and Carthage and Rome. So it was Catholic popes and the bishops in union with them. It wasn't just church fathers who were authoritative, but not the authority.

That seems to be an important distinction. Larry, just speaking for me, I don't feel any special magical pop rocks because I'm Catholic. I'm humbled that God has allowed me, by his grace, to belong to the church that Christ founded.

So I'm humbled. I'm not, you know, triumphalistic about it. I'm happy. I want other people to be happy by belonging to the church that Christ founded. Let me jump in.

Father, go ahead. Go ahead. Well, Larry, the other thing is, I mean, let me ask you, did Jesus write anything? Not that I know of. Good answer. He did kneel down and scribble once, but I don't know if it was words or not.

Exactly. I'll probably get a grocery list, but that's irrelevant. But did Jesus tell his apostles to write anything? Let me think. Not that I know of. I mean, I can't. No. And again, he might have told them something, but it's not in Scripture.

From what we know from the New Testament, he told them to go out and teach and proclaim the kingdom and to baptize in his name. And he also said, and this we have in Scripture, he who hears you hears me.

Now, clearly he was giving authority to teach to those who he chose to be the twelve apostles. And the question is, well, would that authority be something which was passed on or did Jesus think the authority was going to last just for one generation?

But Jesus did not write. He did not ask his apostles to write. He did give the human beings their authority to speak in his name and to bind and to loose in his name. And the problem with the objectivity of Scripture, which is there, is that once you have no authority to interpret it, what do you get?

Not just Lutherans and Catholics, but Methodists, Presbyterians, Baptists and all, you know, 26 ,000 different denominations. I can't believe that Jesus was not as smart as the founding fathers of the United States who had a Supreme Court to determine what the Constitution meant.

That he would simply commit to writing a religion in which he knew men would disagree about without having any certitude on a proper interpretation. So to me, it just seems unlikely that from a human point of view, leave aside that he's the son of God, that he would establish, try to establish unity on a document instead of on a living, you know, authority.

Well, okay, I guess it sort of goes back to my original point. My second point was that the authority of Scripture here, you know, this is an argument that's been going on for 500 years. I think, I mean, you and I sound like we agree, you know, to some high percentage, but there is a difference.

And it's not a question of authority. I agree. It's clearly Jesus, you know, gave us his 12, well, 13 disciples, right? One of them, we know what happened to him. He chose 12, yeah. Yeah, yeah. For that faith to be, you know, obviously communicated and carried on.

And so I believe that the primary source of that is Scripture and Scripture alone. And that's where we differ.

Yeah, we're going back. The Scripture alone part is just not in Scripture. Like faith alone is not in Scripture either. When the term faith alone is used in James chapter 2, it's preceded by the word not.

I think we might want to put a semicolon on it and invite you to call back another time. We've got a lot of people waiting. Jesus founded a church. He didn't write a book. He didn't commission his disciples to write a book.

He wants people to belong to the church that he founded. The Catholic Church does not understand herself as a denomination, but as the bride of Christ. And that bride, unfortunately, has stained garments because of division and sin and schism and so on.

And as we pray for Christian unity, we direct you, Larry. A, invite you to call back and also check out Catholic .com. There's a marvelous track there, free of charge, called Scripture and Tradition. I'm trying to think of an Ignatius title that deals with this.

Fr. Fessio, tickle my tongue. Maybe it's not Carl Adam. Possibly... Well, I think Scott Hahn's Rome Sweet Home has a lot to offer people of the Lutheran persuasion and Presbyterian.

Or Carl Keating's Catholicism and Fundamentalism.

Yeah, Carl's book is good on that, Catholicism and Fundamentalism. Larry, you're a good man. I appreciate the call very much.

Larry, thank you. I think that Lutherans, Catholics and other Christians have to have these kinds of discussions and we may not end up convincing each other, but we have to end up beginning in with respect and try and find the truth.

That's the key. Try and find the truth. Jesus is the truth, no question about that. But what does He want for us in order that we might be one? Yep. Amen. Larry, thanks for the call.

The Canon as a Theological and Historical Issue

Before our last break... And thanks for listening to that phone call. That took place, as I said, on October 31st of 2013. And as soon as I heard, especially the discussion, I didn't hear all of it. I was driving home at that particular point in time.

I grabbed the call at a later point in time and thought, you know, this is the essence of the debate. It was... I thought the Lutheran caller did a fairly decent job for just being a Lutheran caller to the program.

But especially the assertions that were made regarding the issue of the canon, this is the key apologetic issue when it comes to dealing with Roman Catholicism. I think if apologetically we were to take a test that had this question on it, The Trinity is to Jehovah's Witnesses what X is to Roman Catholic apologists.

The only proper answer to filling in the X would be sola scriptura. That is, a Jehovah's Witness will automatically default back to the argument on the Trinity because they feel that's their safest ground.

In the same way, the key apologetic argument that has been used by Roman Catholics at least since the 1980s, and certainly going back before that, but functionally in the trenches, shall we say, in the resurgence of Roman Catholic apologetics, has been the argument on the subject of the canon.

And so the first person I thought of to talk about this and to give us his expert insight on that was Dr. Michael Kruger. You can see in my hands, those of you watching on YouTube, two books that you must have in your apologetic library.

I have said many, many times before, just simply to be functional in the argumentation that is out there today in dealing with secularism, in dealing with Roman Catholicism, dealing with Islam, Andreas Kostenberger and Michael J. Kruger, editors on The Heresy of Orthodoxy.

Need to have this book. Need to make sure your elders and pastors and Bible study teachers have this book. It is vitally important to understanding what you will hear being said in the realms of scholarship.

And then the canon revisited Dr. Kruger's more recent work. He has another work on the canon that just came out in paperback. So he has written two books specifically on that subject, and obviously The Heresy of Orthodoxy touches on relevant issues, because obviously whether there was an orthodoxy is relevant to the development of the concept of canon, etc., etc.

And so I wrote to Dr. Kruger and it was evidence of how busy the man is that, though that was back on November 6th, here two months later we are finally able to get together and address this extremely important issue.

And so let me welcome Dr. Kruger to the program. Dr. Kruger, thank you very much for taking your time to be with us today. Thanks, James. Great to be with you. You know, I was thinking, when we met, when I was there in Charlotte a year ago, I had a sort of life-changing experience in your office.

I don't know if you remember, but I was sitting there talking with you and with Dr. Anderson, and I all of a sudden came to the very shocking realization that I was the oldest person in the room.

Yeah, that'll be life-changing for you.

And it's still depressing to this day, but, you know, what can I say? It was good to have the opportunity of being there. I can't believe an entire year has passed. It's gone fast. Well, for you especially, because you have been installed as the president there at RTS in Charlotte, is it really cold there?

I mean, you all snowed us out when I was there.

Oh, man. You're talking to me the two coldest times of the year, apparently, because you were here last and it was snowing, and even though you're not here now, we're talking and it's very cold here. We got down to 9 last night, which is a new record in North Carolina, and actually I had pipes freeze in my house that are still not unclogged.

I'm hoping they're not going to break. Exactly. Wow. Yeah.

Waiting that one out. Yeah, it's hit us, too. It dropped out of the 70s to 67 for the high.

Well, maybe you have to put a jacket on when you go bike riding.

I might have to do that. Now, I knew you would find it interesting, because you did mention to me as we were discussing that one of the things that you had found unexpected in putting out The Can Revisited was the amount of pushback you got from Roman Catholics.

Yeah. Tell us a little bit about that.

Well, yeah, I wrote the book. Whenever you write a book, you always have sort of a standard person in mind when you write it, even though there's multiple components to your audience. And I have to admit that when I wrote The Can Revisited, I was probably thinking of Modern Critical Scholarship as the major conversation partner with the book, even though, of course, I addressed Roman Catholics in one portion of the book.

It wasn't really my main conversation partner, nor what I really had in mind, because most of my interactions are in the academic community with critical scholars and secular scholars. And so those are the types of arguments I was trying to engage.

But then after the book came out, most of my interaction, negative interaction, I might add, was from Roman Catholics. I was surprised at first, even though as I reflect upon it, I really should not have been surprised.

But I was surprised because I really didn't expect the level of pushback I got. And the area I got it in was also unexpected, which is they were contending not so much around the issue of authority, although that was playing a part, but they were really even pushing back on historical questions, which I thought we'd agree more on.

They wanted to argue that canon was a bit of a mess in early Christianity, and no one really agreed on much of anything at all. And therefore, you have to have an infallible church to tell you which books are in the canon.

And I realized that, in essence, they're making the same argument as many critical scholars make in that regard, trying to show that the history of the canon was just not that smooth, and that therefore you can either abandon it altogether or rely on the church in order to have one.

Now, before we can even meaningfully engage with the claims that were made in the phone call, obviously many, many pages of your two books on canon, and of course you've obviously written other books dealing with the history and ancient context of the New Testament, but many, many pages are addressed to the very issue of what canon is.

One of the biggest problems that I have found in dealing with Roman Catholics is the assumption of a particular concept of canon that may or may not actually be historically valid or relevant. And obviously, for me and for what we do in apologetics, what I want to try to do in this time that we have you on the phone is to try to help people understand what some of the basic issues here are that so often are never discussed— well, so often or never, that really doesn't work— are often never discussed in evangelical contexts in the church, specifically on the subject of canon.

We bring so many presuppositions and assumptions that have never been fleshed out, never been challenged, never been historically verified or anything like that, that that's really where a lot of the problem lies.

So you've done a series of blog posts at michaeljkruger .com. Is that the right address?

Yeah, that's the URL. The title of the blog is actually Canon Fodder, but you're right, the URL is my name, michaeljkruger .com.

Okay. And on the blog, you did a series on the subject—. I think it was something along the lines of the 10 Top Things You Need to Know About the Canon. Was that the title? Something like that?

Yeah, there's two different ones. One is 10 Things Every Christian Should Memorize About the Canon, and then the other one was 10 Misconceptions About the Canon. Okay. And they have similar overlap, but they're a different series.

Okay. So I would direct people there for that information. But let's talk a little bit—and again, you've written many pages on this, and so it's very difficult to condense— but let's talk about what the concept of the canon is first.

If someone were to just walk up to you at church and say, why are you concerned about the canon? What really is the canon? How would you explain to someone accurately, recognizing they may be bringing some bad presuppositions with them, how would you explain to them in an accurate way what we're dealing with when we talk about the canon?

Yeah, well, definitions are key, right? Even as you indicated, you can't really have a cogent conversation without agreeing on what the term means. And the term canon confuses people. They don't know exactly what we're talking about.

Of course, the term itself, even though that's not always the term of what the word means, just simply means standard or some sort of objective measuring stick, if you will, by which we can gauge something.

Early Christians used the term canon to refer to lots of things, sort of the standard of truth, the standard of teaching, but eventually it got attached to refer to the collection of scriptural books that we affirm.

It's from God. The official definition I use in my book—this is a paraphrase, it's something along the lines of the collection of scriptural books that God has given his corporate church. Now, the reason I use that definition, the collection of scriptural books that God has given his corporate church, is because it sort of sucks in all the key issues there.

One of the major ones being that canon is not something that men ultimately determine. It's ultimately God that's determining canon. Men can receive canon. They can affirm it. They can acknowledge it.

They can submit to it, or I guess not submit to it. But they are not the agent that constitutes canon. And this is where I think a lot of the misconceptions come into play, and particularly with our Roman Catholic friends.

The idea of canon in many people's minds means authoritative church declarations or authoritative church teaching and things like this. Now, there's some truth in that, of course, because we think the church does make declarations about which books are from God.

But one of the things about that definition that I want to point out to the listeners is that we think that canon ultimately is something that God determines. So if that's true, you can actually have a canon in principle without having anybody know about it or anybody respond to it.

If God has given his books, then they can exist apart from any reception at all and still be technically canon. And so I cover this at length, both in Canon Revisited and in some journal articles I've written.

But I think it's a good place to start to make sure we have our definition straight.

Right, and especially in this area, my experience— obviously I've come at this from a very different background as far as what's causing me to think about these things. I had to struggle with the issue of the canon in debating Roman Catholic apologists.

And those were the first debates that I did. The first formal debates I did, starting in 1990— you were much younger then, as was I— were with people like Jerry Matitix, who was a former PCA minister.

And I would listen to him doing debates all over the place. And it was always his go-to argument to hit up the evangelical on the subject of the canon. And generally the response was stuttering, stammering, wondering what in the world to say.

And so obviously I had to deal with it. It seemed like the most difficult area to deal with. And I had read, since I had been dealing with Mormonism before that, the issue of the canon wasn't new to me.

I mean, you've got people with the Book of Mormon, you've got to be talking about canon issues, why you would think the canon was closed, etc. etc. But Rome comes along, and Rome is basically saying that you need to have infallible knowledge of the canon before the Scripture itself can function as the norm within the Church.

Now historically, that automatically raises problems. Because, as you know from the Roman Catholic perspective, the first dogmatic definition of the canon is not until April of 1546. So if Scripture can't function within the Church until 1546, you have a bit of a problem.

But still, pointing that out is just a negative response. It's not a positive response. And so the conclusion I came to, and I guess B .B. Warfield must have helped me somewhere along the line, though I don't even remember that happening.

And what was so encouraging when I first read Canon Revisited is that you were saying the exact same thing, is that I recognized that the real problem was most of the books on the subject of canon come at the subject backwards.

They come at it anachronistically, from our standpoint, looking backwards. They look at it from a historical perspective. They're saying, well, how did the Church do this? How did the Church do that? And obviously the very issue of canon is theological in nature.

It's a theological concept, and yet the vast majority of books, except yours, and Warfield, like I said, I think, touched on this, approach it as if you can define it and discuss it outside of its theological context.

And it just turns things on its head.

Yeah, I absolutely agree. In fact, that's one of the major reasons I even wrote the book, was that as I taught an elective on New Testament canon here at RTS, I began to recognize that the books I was assigning just weren't covering the issues I wanted covered.

I would have to cover them in the lectures, but there was no book I could assign that would cover the theology of canon or even the epistemology of canon. No one was addressing these issues. No one was talking about them.

Almost every book on canon was what I call the data books, where they basically just unload a dump truck of data on you about what book was received by which church father in which year. Now, those are important issues, and I cover some of those in my book, but you just can't think that extends the discussion.

That doesn't cover the issues of canon that need to be covered. And so what's happening in the Church, and this is, of course, part of the impetus for Canon Revisited, is that the Church is just ill-equipped to deal with these objections, whether it be from Roman Catholics or critical scholars on canon.

And they find themselves, as you put it a minute ago, stammering and stuttering without any answers. And that's just not acceptable. I think as Christians we need to be more ready for an answer, regardless of who we're talking to.

And this question is so central that we have to be able to articulate why we believe what we believe about it.

Most definitely. And the key issue that I came up with, and that you mentioned and fill out so much more fully than anything I've done, was I've pointed out the fact I've written a number of books, and so there is a canon of my writings.

Now, I did not have to sit down, open up a document on my computer, and type out canon of the books of James White for that canon to come into existence. As soon as I wrote that first book, that canon existed.

Now, I had infallible knowledge of it, because I'm the one that wrote the books. Nobody else has infallible knowledge of it. No one was there when I typed every single letter of every single word. There might have been a ghostwriter or something over there, though that's a real issue in evangelicalism these days.

But anyway, I had infallible knowledge of the canon because I'm the one producing the works. And what Rome was basically saying is, you need to have God's level of knowledge of the canon for Scripture to function as Scripture.

And that was the first thing that I started realizing, look, canon is an artifact of inspiration. It comes into existence because of what God has done, and my fellow Protestants who are trying to defend this issue by only looking backwards at history and not dealing with it first as the theological thing that it is, that's why they can't deal with this, and that's why they're not being able to give a meaningful and strong response to Rome.