The Canon Question

Jan 23rd, 2010 | By Tom Brown | Category: Lead Article

“I would not have believed the gospel, unless the authority of the Church had induced me.” (St. Augustine, Contra Ep. Fund., V, 6.)

I. THE CANON QUESTION.

As Christians, how is it that we know we are saved by the death and resurrection of the incarnate Son of God? For those raised as Christians, the Sunday School sing-song answer “for the Bible tells me so” may come to mind, and this fairly well summarizes the Protestant teaching on the communication of saving truth. The Belgic Confession, an historical expression of the Reformed faith used widely in Dutch denominations, asserts that we know God by the beauty of creation, and “more openly by his holy and divine Word.” ¹ The Westminster Confession of Faith, widely adopted by Presbyterian denominations with traditionally Scottish origins, contains a comparable teaching: while the “light of nature, and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, as to leave men unexcusable,” we still need revealed truth to possess the “knowledge of God, and of His will, which is necessary unto salvation.” ² Regarding this revelation, the Westminster Confession holds that God chose “to commit the same wholly unto writing.” ³

: A Portion of the Hexapla

But this answer, that we know saving truth from the Bible, pushes the question back. What is the Bible? Our previous two articles, Hermeneutics and the Authority of Scripture and Solo Scriptura, Sola Scriptura, and the Question of Interpretive Authority, explored aspects of this question, including what we believe about the Bible, and our notion of the Bible as inerrant truth. In this paper I intend to explore another aspect of the question “What is the Bible?,” and this I will refer to as the Canon Question: “By what criterion do we know which texts comprise the Bible?” This is an essential question all Christians should be able to answer, but, in my experience in discussing this with other believers, it is to many a foreign subject matter. Without understanding why we believe the Gospel of Mark, or the Epistle of James, or the book of Esther to be among those writings inspired by the Holy Spirit, we cannot give a principled reason why we believe these books to be Scripture. Without any principled reason why we believe these books to be Scripture, we have no principled reason or basis for knowing what is the deposit of faith, and thus cannot give an answer to ‘everyone who asks us to give a reason for the hope we have.’ ⁴

In this article, I argue that Reformed theology is intrinsically incapable of answering the Canon Question. The confessional and classical Reformed answer to the Canon Question, which will be considered in depth in section II.A., relies upon the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit in the heart of each believer to give assurance of a text’s canonicity. I will argue that since any two Spirit-filled Christians who are new to Scripture might not agree that any given text is canonical, this test is of dubious reliability, and thus cannot be our ultimate measure of Scripture. The inherent subjectivity of this classical Reformed basis for the canon has led to a variety of different answers to the Canon Question, each seeking a more objective basis for identifying God-breathed texts. These various efforts to articulate an objective test for the canon are not mutually exclusive. They can be summarized as follows: the Old Testament canon is that set of Hebrew texts that were canonized by Jewish leaders of Jerusalem around the time of Christ; the New Testament canon is defined as those books which are immediately or mediately of Apostolic authorship; and finally, the canon is defined as those books which received widespread acceptance in the early Church (until a certain point in time). I will explore these topics, as well as Martin Luther’s view that the canon properly consists of those Old and New Testament books which “preach Christ,” in the remainder of section II. There, I shall argue that, given the Reformed assumption that whatever authoritatively testifies to the canonicity of Scripture must be more authoritative than Scripture, each of them necessarily places extra-biblical evidence above Scripture in its effort to objectively identify the canon. This places something from outside of Scripture above Scripture, and thereby violates the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura.

In Section III, I argue that the very process of answering the Canon Question violates sola scriptura. This is because answering the question must involve extra-Biblical human judgment. This judgment is placed over Scripture because it defines the canon. By placing this judgment above the sole permitted infallible authority, the process of answering the question violates sola scriptura. As I will conclude, the fundamental problem for the sola scriptura position is that it has no way of determining the canon that is faithful to its own concept of authority.

II. DIVERSITY OF THEORIES.

Over the centuries since the Protestant Reformation, a variety of theories have sprung up that attempt to articulate an objective test for determining a text’s canonicity. The answers to the Canon Question that I describe here are comprehensive of the Protestant positions, although not exhaustive. Outlying variants on these theories abound, but the principal theories in use by Reformed and evangelical scholars are included below.⁵ These principal theories share the characteristics of purporting to reach their conclusion objectively, and (although being different tests) of reaching the same 66-book conclusion. The late Covenant Seminary professor R. Laird Harris believed that there is room within Protestant scholarship for multiple, and perhaps even competing, principles for determining the same canon:

[S]everal differing views concerning the principle of determination of the canon–views not necessarily exclusive–have been held through the centuries, and there is room for some differences of opinion on this point. . . . It is freely acknowledged that the views on canonicity here expressed are not the only views held by conservative Biblical scholars.⁶

For Harris, having a variety of canon theories within the Protestant academy is tolerable, so long as they each yield the 66-book Protestant canon. But as Dr. Flesseman-van Leer has rightly observed, those who accept the traditional canon of Scripture today cannot legitimately defend it with arguments that played no part in its original formation. ⁷ Post hoc rationalization of such a critical point as the formation of the canon would be like painting a target around one’s arrow that is already embedded in the wall. If a rule which has led some to the 66-book canon proves false, or fails to be truly objective, the remedy is not to find a new rule allowing us to reach the same conclusion. Instead, to be intellectually honest, we must find the rule that is ultimately right and true, and accept where it leads us, wherever it leads us.

Besides those Protestant theologians who tolerate competing canon theories but themselves only advance one criterion of canonicity, other theologians are willing simultaneously to use a plurality of criteria to reach the same conclusion. For example, Harris determines the extent of the Old Testament canon by following “[t]wo lines of approach,” “one historical and the other an appeal to authority.” ⁸ He writes, “[b]y both methods it can be seen that these Apocryphal books cannot properly be included in the sacred canon.” ⁹ That is, Harris is willing to use a plurality of theories, ones which he views as complementary, to reach his conclusion about the canon of Scripture. ¹⁰ While using plural criteria to accumulate evidence in favor of a text’s inclusion in the canon would be proper to the extent that each criterion is valid and consistent with one’s overall scriptural paradigm, it would be improper to the extent that any one component criterion was not. That is, for the Protestant, a theory that proves incompatible with sola scriptura cannot be salvaged merely by tying it together with a more defensible theory. Bearing in mind that each Protestant theory must be internally consistent with sola scriptura, I will now take them up in turn.

A. SELF-ATTESTATION AND TESTIMONY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT:

The Classical Reformed View:

The classical and confessional Reformed answer to the Canon Question stresses that the Holy Spirit is our immediate assurance of the canon’s truth, and also notes that the reliability of Scripture appears from within Scripture itself. This answer varies somewhat from source to source in its particular emphasis, but the assurance of the Holy Spirit is a clear common theme. In the course of the Reformation, Calvin was an early advocate for this position, which later became solemnized by the Reformed confessional standards. ¹¹ He taught that for the reader enjoying the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit, Scripture is self-attesting (i.e., it says on its own to this reader that it is Scripture):

[T]hose whom the Holy Spirit has inwardly taught truly rest upon Scripture, and that Scripture indeed is self-authenticated; hence it is not right to subject it to proof and reasoning. And the certainty it deserves with us, it attains by the testimony of the Spirit. For even if it wins reverence for itself by its own majesty, it seriously affects us only when it is sealed upon our hearts through the Spirit. Therefore, illumined by his power, we believe neither by our own nor by anyone else’s judgment that Scripture is from God; but above human judgment we affirm with utter certainty (just as if we were gazing upon the majesty of God himself) that it has flowed to us from the very mouth of God by the ministry of men. We seek no proofs, no marks of genuineness upon which our judgment may lean; but we subject our judgment and wit to it as to a thing far beyond any guesswork! ¹²

Calvin also likens asking the Catholic’s question, “how can we be assured that [Scripture] has sprung from God without recourse to the decree of the church?,” to asking “whence will we learn to distinguish light from darkness, white from black, sweet from bitter?” ¹³ For John Calvin, it is as apparent as black is from white which books are to be included in the canon: “Indeed, Scripture exhibits fully as clear evidence of its own truth as white and black things do of their color, or sweet and bitter things do of their taste.” ¹⁴ His answer, then, is that we can be assured that Scripture is of God simply by looking at it, just as we can tell black from white simply by looking at it.

The traditional Reformed confessions also did not neglect to answer the Canon Question.¹⁵ According to the Belgic Confession, we are to receive the books of the Protestant canon, and all taught within them,

“not so much because the church
receives and approves them as such
but above all because the Holy Spirit
testifies in our hearts
that they are from God,
and also because they
prove themselves
to be from God.
For even the blind themselves are able to see
that the things predicted in them
do happen.”¹⁶

Similarly, in the words of the Westminster Confession,

[O]ur full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority [of Scripture], is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts.” ¹⁷

What makes this classical and confessional position attractive, from the Reformed perspective, is its immediate reliance on God to lead Christians to His revealed truth. We do not have to accept the canonical texts “so much because the church receives and approves” them, but because we are convinced immediately by the Holy Spirit. There are no middle men to muddy the waters. By doing this, the Reformed confessions mean to avoid subordinating infallible Scripture to a fallible mediate human authority. This is essential to the Reformed system because if Scripture were subordinate to fallible human authority, its contents could be erroneous, thus rendering Scripture unreliable. And if Scripture were unreliable, it could not act as our sole infallible authority over all matters of the faith.

However, since any two Christians might not agree that any given book is (or is not) canonical even where they reflect carefully on the testimony of the Holy Spirit as they approach it, this test lacks objectivity and reliability. We should be able to verify the reliability of this classical Reformed canon criterion in the following way. If the classical Reformed canon criterion were true and we set various candidate texts, like books or passages from the New Testament, apocryphal works, or revered writings from the early Church Fathers, in front of new Christians who have the Spirit but have never read the Bible, they would all pick out the same books or passages as canonical. If Calvin’s black-from-white claim is true, our hypothetical new Christians attempting to discern canonical books from non-canonical would come to one conclusion. If we could run this hypothetical test, and we obtained a result that was successful less than 100% of the time, or even less than the vast majority of the time, at identifying the one true canon, this would show that this test is not a reliable test for determining the canon of Scripture.

Something close to this hypothetical test has already been run. In the early centuries of Christian history, the many faithful Christians in close communion with the Holy Spirit, and who did not yet have a determined canon for their Bible, did not conclude that the Protestant 66-book canon is correct. We have evidence that many early Church figures, including St. Augustine himself, supported the inclusion of the deuterocanonical texts within the canon. Not one single source from this period articulates the Protestant canon. ¹⁸ Following the Reformation, before the first generation of Reformers had died, the alleged black-from-white clarity regarding which books belong in the canon also failed to produce universal agreement. ¹⁹ These cases from history are evidence that the Reformed answer to the Canon Question does not provide a reliable method for determining the canon. This is deeply problematic, since assurance in the canon is the foundation of the sola scriptura paradigm.

Part in parcel with Calvin’s view that the Holy Spirit testifies in our hearts to the veracity of the canon, Calvin rejects the essential role of the Church in identifying the canon. In his Institutes, he starts with the proposition that Scripture obtains its authority directly from God, and not from the Church:

But a most pernicious error widely prevails that Scripture has only so much weight as is conceded to it by the consent of the church. . . . For they mock the Holy Spirit when they ask: Who can convince us that these writings came from God? . . . . Who can persuade us to receive one book in reverence but to exclude another, unless the church prescribe a sure rule for all these matters?²⁰

As an initial matter, Calvin misstates the Catholic position by stating that, according to the Catholic Church, Scripture has its authoritative weight accorded to it by the Church. Rather, the Catholic position is that Scripture has divine authority because it is God-breathed, the Holy Spirit having inspired the texts’ authors. That is, Scripture has divine authority because of its divine author, not because of the role of God’s Church in producing it. As the Catholic Church decreed during the First Vatican Council:

These [73] books the Church holds to be sacred and canonical not because she subsequently approved them by her authority after they had been composed by unaided human skill, nor simply because they contain revelation without error, but because, being written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author, and were as such committed to the Church.²¹

This belief is reflected also in the dogmatic work Dei Verbum, written by Pope Paul VI in 1965:

Those divinely revealed realities which are contained and presented in Sacred Scripture have been committed to writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. For holy mother Church, relying on the belief of the Apostles (see John 20:31; 2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Peter 1:19-20, 3:15-16), holds that the books of both the Old and New Testament in their entirety, with all their parts, are sacred and canonical because written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author and have been handed on as such to the Church herself.²²

These texts prove that the Catholic Church does not maintain that the Scriptures have only so much weight as is accorded to them by the Catholic Church. Rather, as the Catholic Church explains, the authority of the Scriptures derives from their being written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, with God as their author.

Furthermore, regarding Calvin’s view of the relationship between the Church and Scripture, he merely asserts, but does not demonstrate, that the Catholic Church’s position would mock the Holy Spirit. He claims to find such mocking in the belief that one cannot be persuaded to receive one book and exclude another without the Church prescribing a sure rule. Why would the Church’s prescribing a “sure rule” for knowing Scripture be a mockery of the Holy Spirit? Because for Calvin, our obtaining assurances from the Church would necessarily exclude obtaining assurances from the Holy Spirit. This is because, as shown in the quotation from Calvin cited above, he has created a false dichotomy between the Church and the Holy Spirit. For him, these two sources of assurance cannot work in a confluent way. For obvious reasons, once one accepts this dichotomy, one comes to favor the Holy Spirit option, making the option of seeing the Church as a source of assurance a mockery.

Calvin’s rhetorical question: “Who can persuade us to receive one book in reverence but to exclude another, unless the church prescribe a sure rule for all these matters?” also misstates the Catholic teaching. The Catholic Church does not claim that a person cannot be persuaded to receive or exclude a book without the Church prescribing a sure rule. One could accept or reject a book without the benefit of a “sure rule” from the Church, as occurred throughout the early Church. Rather, apart from Magisterial guidance concerning the canon, it would be exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, for all believers independently to come to complete agreement about the canon without each believer receiving miraculous enlightenment from the Holy Spirit. Christ has given authority to the Magisterium in such a way that grace builds on nature. That is, the visible government of the Church, being guided by the Holy Spirit, does not nullify, but fulfills, our natural need for visible government in the supernatural society that is the Church. But, the Church and the Holy Spirit do work together to assure us of the scriptural canon. As St. Augustine said, “I would not have believed the gospel, unless the authority of the Church had induced me.” ²³

Calvin next argues that the Church itself is grounded upon Scripture, and not the other way around:

But such wranglers are neatly refuted by just one word of the apostle. He testifies that the church is “built upon the foundation of the prophets and apostles.” If the teaching of the prophets and apostles is the foundation, this must have had authority before the church began to exist. ²⁴

Note the significance of Calvin’s addition of the word “teaching” to his restatement of Ephesians. But St. Paul actually says that the Church is built on the foundation of the prophets and the apostles themselves. For Calvin, a teaching has authority, not the teacher. He treats Paul’s statement that the Church is “built upon the foundation of the prophets and apostles” as referring to a set of teachings, not any persons.

Calvin’s whole doctrine of Scripture revolves around this insertion of the word “teaching” into St. Paul’s statement to the Ephesians, and upon seeing the teacher as having authority derived from the teaching only insofar as he holds to that teaching. But it is the prophets and apostles themselves who were given divine authority. Consider Matthew 7:29, in which we are told that Jesus “taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.” Jesus taught as one ‘with authority,’ not as one ‘with words with authority.’ Words of law do not have authority in isolation from their source, but are authoritative because of their relationship to their source. For example, the U.S. Constitution is not authoritative apart from its source, but represents the authority of the People who promulgated it. Likewise, the words of the Bible are authoritative because of their relation to their authors, especially their divine Author. The Church is not founded upon these words, the teachings of prophets and apostles, but upon the prophets and apostles themselves based on their divine authority. Because of the prophets’ and apostles’ divine authorization, we can know the teaching they transmitted to be divine in origin.

Further Refinement of Self-Attestation:

In his work, Redemptive History and the New Testament Scriptures, theologian Herman Ridderbos provides a modern Reformed articulation of the confessional view. In line with Calvin, he argues that canonical texts are self-attesting (or self-witnessing) to the reader who is aided through faith by the Holy Spirit to see Scripture for what it is. ²⁵ Ridderbos also issues a noteworthy critique of the various proposed Protestant criteria of canonicity other than the classical Reformed position. He sees these as little or no better than the Catholic view, which, he says, effectively places the Church over Scripture, because they too put something over Scripture. He explains:

For no New Testament writing is there a certificate issued either by Christ or by the apostles that guarantees its canonicity, and we know nothing of a special revelation or voice from heaven that gave divine approval to the collection of the twenty-seven books in question. Every attempt to find an a posteriori element to justify the canon, whether in the doctrinal authority or in the gradually developing consensus of the church, goes beyond the canon itself, posits a canon above the canon, and thereby comes into conflict with the order of redemptive history and the nature of the canon itself.²⁶

In this context, Ridderbos uses a priori to mean knowledge that has nothing but the canon as its starting point. His claim, then, is that if any part of a canon test depends on something outside of the canon (what he calls “a posteriori” elements)–for example, on the consensus of the Church–this explanation has placed some extra-Biblical authority “above” the canon. Within the framework of sola scriptura, this is a commendably logical observation. If Scripture is the sole infallible authority of the faith, and everything else is subordinate in authority to Scripture, then the basis for determining the canon cannot be any authority but Scripture. The working principle here is that an authority is only as authoritative as that on which it is founded. Each of the criteria listed below within the remainder of section II, most of which Ridderbos takes up with particularity, falls prey to this claim. Lessons of history, use by Hebrew-speaking Jews of the time of Christ, prophetic and apostolic authority, and the like–each of these involve criteria by which a text is judged to be canonical that is extra-canonical, so goes beyond the canon itself, and thus posits a canon above the canon.

Here is Ridderbos’s riddle then, which he believes Calvin’s view has solved: how can we determine the canon, which does not fall from Heaven, without relying on extra-canonical evidence? Riddberos sees the need to avoid the use of extra-canonical evidence, because doing so would, under the Calvinist assumption, place the confirming evidence over the canon, which would violate sola scriptura. Given Calvin’s assumption, Ridderbos needs to find evidence for the contents of the canon that is located in or derived from the canon itself. Ridderbos sees the Reformed answer to both the riddle he presents and the Canon Question this way:

Reformed theologians do not justify the acceptance of the canon by appealing to a “canon within the canon.” Nor do they appeal to its recognition by the church or to the experience of faith or to a recurring, actualistic understanding of the Word of God as canon. . . .

. . .

Calvin appealed not only to the witness of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of believers but above all to the self-attestation of the Scriptures. The divine character of the Bible itself gives it its authority This divine character is so evident that anyone who has eyes to see is directly convinced and does not need the mediation of the church. . . . [As] Karl Barth wrote, ‘The Bible makes itself to be canon.’

Corresponding to this objective principle of the self-attestation of Scripture, from its inception Reformed theology has expressly distinguished the subjective principle of the testimonium Spiritus Sancti. . . . He opens blind eyes to the divine light that shines in the Scriptures. Later Reformed theology has correctly emphasized the fact that the internal witness of the Spirit is not the basis for but the means by which the canon of Scripture is recognized and accepted as the indubitable Word of God.²⁷

From this we see that his view consists of two elements: (1) that Scripture is self-attesting, (2) via the Holy Spirit leading the reader to recognize it as canonical. ²⁸ The first element, if taken on its own, would certainly answer Ridderbos’s riddle. If some quality of Scripture allows it to attest to its own canonicity, then there is no need to resort to evidence that is external to Scripture in order to define Scripture. ²⁹ Thus, nothing is placed “above” the canon, leaving Scripture as our final authority. The second element also plays a vital role; it explains why it is not the case that the entire world recognizes Scripture’s own attestations, why the world does not see the black from the white. In Ridderbos’s own terms, the first element of the test of canonicity is objective and the second element is subjective.

But prior to Calvin, the Church never used this method to recognize a book as belonging to the canon. The Church recognized books as canonical on the basis of their having been inspired by the Holy Spirit. ³⁰ In its process of identifying which books possessed this quality, the Church never employed a private, individualistic means. Instead, it relied upon councils of the Church confirmed by the Bishop of Rome. ³¹ Again, as one cannot legitimately defend the canon with arguments which played no part in its original formation, Calvin’s novel elements cannot explain how Church reached its present canon. ³²

Also, the subjective aspect of Ridderbos’s theory renders the entire test too subjective to be reliable. This is because each text’s objective quality, self-attestation, is only evident to an observer to the extent that he subjectively experiences the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit. Just as a building cannot be more sturdy than its foundation, the Reformed answer to the Canon Question is no more objective than its most subjective part. Here, the objective quality is not merely supported or enhanced by the subjective, but is entirely dependent upon it. Using the Reformed frame, if two people disagree in their view of which texts are (objectively) self-attesting as Scripture, they can only settle their disagreement by calling into question the degree to which (subjectively) the Holy Spirit is testifying in their interlocutor’s heart. In this way the classical Reformed theory is too subjective to be a reliable basis for assuring believers which texts belong in the Bible.

That the Reformed test is too subjective to be reliable because new Christians considering candidate texts would not reach the same conclusion when applying it, has already been discussed above. This also appears from the views of Luther himself. Remember that according to Ridderbos, the objective element of the Bible’s “divine character [is] so evident that anyone who has eyes to see is directly convinced and does not need the mediation of the church.” ³³ But Luther’s subjective interpretation of the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit regarding Scripture led him, at least at times in his life, to some different conclusions than Calvin about certain of our New Testament books. ³⁴ Neither was Luther alone in his day in doubting the canonicity of certain New Testament works.

Calvin knew of and addressed conflicting conclusions about the canon in the introductions to his commentaries on Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, and Jude. In one instance Calvin called into question which spirit was working in the doubters’ heart. In his argument for the inclusion of the book of Hebrews in the canon, Calvin says, “I, indeed, without hesitation, class [Hebrews] among apostolical writings; nor do I doubt but that it has been through the craft of Satan that any have been led to dispute its authority.” ³⁵ Calvin is explaining that Satan undoubtedly is involved in a case where some are denying what he finds to be canonical. We see that under the classical Reformed view, in a case of dispute, a failed meetings of the minds on what is self-attesting is explained at the subjective level.

What of the reply that since all Protestants agree on the canon, this is evidence that these 66 books properly comprise the canon, objectively reached? First, the premise that all Protestants agree on the canon is false. The classical Lutheran position does not agree with the Reformed view of the canon, in that Lutheranism creates a canon-within-a-canon, relegating some books to a secondary place. This position distinguishes a homologouna from an antilegomena, i.e., never-disputed books from disputed books such as Jude and Revelation. Unlike the Reformed canon, which is a proper source for the formation of dogma in its entirety, only the never-disputed books may be used for the defintion of dogma within a classical Lutheran view. ³⁶ Further, to the extent that Protestants see themselves as lineal descendants of pre-Reformational proto-Protestants, it cannot be said that “Protestants” have agreed on the canon throughout the Church’s history. As I discuss elsewhere, many biblical texts have been rejected at one time or another by various Church Fathers. Finally, widespread agreement amongst today’s Protestants does not disprove the objective canonical quality of the deuterocanonical books since the vast majority of Protestants have never read them. Today’s average Protestant does not study why he has the Protestant 66-book canon, and does not independently decide if the Bible handed to him is correct. Rather, he accepts as an a priori of his Protestant faith that the 66-book canon is correct. Belief that the 66-book canon is right is part and parcel with the small cluster of unifying evangelical Protestant beliefs. Since it is a unifying principle for most Protestants, we would hardly expect to see anything but universal agreement; thus we can draw no lessons about the canon from this widespread agreement.

With Ridderbos’s answer to the Canon Question, we have no way of knowing whether the Holy Spirit is permitting a reader to recognize a text as canonical, or is simply permitting a reader falsely to perceive it as Scripture. We cannot tell since we would necessarily have to appeal to Ridderbos’s subjective element in order to know which of these actions the Holy Spirit is engaged in when, for example, He permits Catholics to recognize the deuterocanonical texts as Divine. If the Holy Spirit is simply permitting Catholics falsely to perceive them as Scripture, as Protestants must maintain, then Protestants have no objective criteria by which to distinguish this act of the Holy Spirit from cases in which He is permitting readers to recognize a text as canonical. And such a test is surely a kind of ad hoc opportunism in which it is claimed that the Holy Spirit is doing whatever I am doing, even if many others are doing many things contrary to what I am doing.

To resolve the disputes that lingered in spite of his supposedly objective test, Calvin employed a potpourri of fall-back arguments to shore up his teaching that the Holy Spirit allows a reader to perceive directly what belongs to the canon of Scripture. According to Ridderbos, Calvin distinguished Scripture from what did not belong to Scripture, “not simply by appealing to the witness of the Holy Spirit as some infallible, inward arbitrator, but he appealed to the fact that the authority of those books has been recognized from the church’s inception, that they contain nothing unworthy of an apostle of Christ, and that the majesty of the Spirit of Christ is everywhere apparent in them.” ³⁷ Thus he utilizes four different factors, culled from reason and not revelation, to settle the disputes in favor of his ‘objective’ conclusions. ³⁸ Calvin is not alone in finding the need for supplemental arguments to support the supposedly objective, self-attesting, black-from-white criterion for determining the canon. The renowned 20th-century Reformed theologian F. F. Bruce, in employing his own supplemental arguments, said that “[i]t is unlikely . . . that the Spirit’s witness would enable a reader to discern that Ecclesiastes is the word of God while Ecclesiasticus is not.”³⁹

This ‘appeal to external facts’ reveals something about Reformed thinkers’ discomfort with relying too heavily on the supposedly objective self-attestation method of discerning the canon. This ‘appeal to external facts’ also is in tension with Calvin’s and Ridderbos’s position that sees using evidence outside of Scripture to determine Scripture as effectively placing that evidence over Scripture, and Calvin’s potpourri use of fall-back argumentation. ⁴⁰ Calvin, in using reason and historical proof to determine the canon (for example, by appealing to “those books” that have “been recognized [as canonical] from the church’s inception”), is either contradicting his principle that no evidence outside of Scripture can determine the canon, or is refining his principle in an ad hoc fashion.

But without the external appeal, Calvin’s position is left only with the two elements mentioned above: self-attestation and the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit. However, as we have seen, the self-attestation element effectively collapses into the subjective element–the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit–when faced with disagreements about the canon. Because what then remains is too subjective a test to yield a single canon if put before a hypothetical test group of new faith-filled Christians, it cannot bind us to a single set of texts as certainly belonging in the Bible.

B. THE ORIGINAL HEBREW OLD TESTAMENT:

Another Protestant answer to the Canon Question, used either as an independent criterion of canonicity or as a supplement to other criteria, holds that the canon of the Old Testament is that which originally was in use by Hebrew-speaking Jews. The timeframe of this hypothetical ‘original’ canon will go back as far as the historical evidence will support the idea of a closed Hebrew canon. Dr. Harris, a noted Reformed Old Testament scholar, put forward this view in an extensive treatment of Old Testament history in his book Inspiration and Canonicity of the Scriptures.⁴¹

Starting with a discussion of the Hebrew manuscripts in use amongst modern biblical Scholars, Harris states: “Our English Old Testament depends largely on medieval Hebrew manuscripts from about A.D. 900 and following. These Hebrew manuscripts contain our familiar 39 Old Testaments books.” ⁴² He then attempts to proceed back through history, as early as can be traced, to determine the original Hebrew canon. The Babylonian Talmud lists the Hebrew books accepted in about A.D. 200, the time of its writing. These align with the 39 Protestant books of the Old Testament. ⁴³ Harris also presents a litany of early Christian writers who discussed Hebrew canons quite similar to the 39-book Protestant Old Testament. ⁴⁴

A test of canonicity that relies on such extra-Biblical evidence as what the Jews of A.D. 200 (or any other time) accepted as canonical falls subject to the critique of Ridderbos, noted above. ⁴⁵ Without biblical warrant to craft such a test, it remains extra-Biblical. Therefore, its application would be a canon above the canon and thus violate sola scriptura according to Ridderbos’s criteria. A major problem with this canon theory is that it grants to the Jewish leaders of Jesus’ day an authority which, it claims, if possessed by the Church, would undermine the authority of Scripture. But it would be ad hoc to allow a Jewish magisterial authority to determine the canon while claiming that a determination of the canon by way of Catholic magisterial authority would undermine the authority of Scripture.

The ‘Original Hebrew’ Canon:

Setting aside its extra-biblicality and focusing on its application, the ‘Original Hebrew Canon’ answer to the Canon Question leads to additional problems.

First, there is no historical basis to conclude that any one Jewish group had the authority to pronounce and close the canon for other Jewish groups, or that any one of them could conclude the canon for Christianity. While there was a body of Scribes sitting “in the chair of Moses” who may have had the authority to rule on the contents of, and eventually to close, the canon of the Old Testament, the fact remains that differing groups of Jews at the time of the founding of Christianity accepted different canons. ⁴⁶ Harris admits that the Essenes probably accepted for their canon, in addition to the generally accepted texts, “other books written by members of their own sect.” ⁴⁷ While Harris and Bruce reject claims from within academia that the Sadducees accepted only the Pentateuch as canonical,⁴⁸ Bruce goes on to explain that the Samaritans held exactly that belief: “As for the Samaritans, their Bible was restricted to the Pentateuch⁴⁹.”

The Diaspora Jews, on the other hand, used the Greek Septuagint, which included the deuterocanonical texts as well as some apocryphal texts. ⁵⁰ Harris dismisses this problem by denying that history can prove that the canon used by Jews of the Diaspora (what Harris calls the Alexandrian canon) included the deuterocanonical texts:

That our present Septuagint copies have a variant canon really proves nothing about the Alexandrian canon of A.D. 50 much less the Alexandrian canon of around 200 B.C., when the Septuagint was translated, for in those vital centuries there were three major factors which surely affected such questions.⁵¹

What follows is Harris’s explanation of how it might have come to pass that the modern Septuagint does not match the earlier Septuagintal canon, which presumably would have matched the ‘original Hebrew canon’ that Harris is pursuing. Firstly, says Harris, the temple was destroyed in A.D. 70, but until that time “the canon would naturally be defined at Jerusalem for all the Jewish world.” ⁵² In other words, while the views of dispersed Jews are not authoritative in determining the Old Testament canon because of their distance from the Jewish center of gravity, for Harris, the views of those Jews in the Holy City are binding. Harris does not expand his claim beyond opining that the canon “naturally” would have come from Jerusalem. Harris does not show that the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem decided anything regarding the deuterocanonical texts prior to AD 90. He does not show that they formally made a conclusion regarding the canon that was binding on all Jews.

No authority within Scripture, and no argument from reason, requires Christians to abide by the speculative conclusions of the first-century Pharisaic leaders from Jerusalem, some of the very ones who had Christ put to death. The definitive reason why the Septuagint was accepted by the Church is because it was accepted by the Apostles. Even if the non-Christian Jews of A.D. 40 had ruled against the Septuagint, that would not in any way change its acceptance by the Church. After all, the authority for the Church flows from Christ to His Apostles, not to the determinations of non-Christian Jewish leaders.

Secondly, Harris argues, early “Christians throughout the Roman Empire naturally used the Greek, as the New Testament language evidences. They therefore naturally appealed to the Greek Old Testament,” while the “Jews in self-defense argued that some of the Messianic passages were mistranslated.” ⁵³ The “Jews retreated into the Hebrew while the Christians took over the Septuagint.” ⁵⁴ Along these same lines, Bruce notes the Jewish disdain for the Christians’ thorough appropriation of the Septuagint: “the Jews became increasingly disenchanted with it. The time came when one rabbi compared ‘the accursed day on which the seventy elders wrote the Law in Greek for the king’ to the day on which Israel made the golden calf.” ⁵⁵

Why, then, as Harris implies, is the opinion of the non-converting Jews more reliable than the opinion of those who converted to Christ and widely used the Greek Septuagint? For Harris, the answer is because “the Christians did not have the regulative effect of ancient history to help them retain a proper view of the canon.” ⁵⁶ By this, he means that early Christians lost their grounding in Hebrew tradition, and thus lost the guiding benefits this tradition would have provided. Here we have a striking statement from Harris. He must believe that the “regulative effect of ancient history” (that is, tradition) could maintain the non-Christian Jews in truth about the canon, while the “regulative effect” of the Holy Spirit did not preserve the Church from the grave error of canonizing spurious texts. There are important presuppositions implicit in Harris’s position. He views the first century Church with the eye of an ecclesial deist, meaning he does not see God as actively protecting the Church from error. ⁵⁷ It is as if, for Harris, either the Apostles had no authority to determine for the Church what is her Old Testament Canon, or the Christians of the first century already had departed from what the Apostles had declared to be the authoritative Old Testament canon. For whatever reason, Harris believes that the early Christians were not guided by tradition, while the non-Christian Jews were.

The rapid and ubiquitous way in which Christians made use of the Septuagint is more reason, not less, to trust its contents. These Christians’ use of the Septuagint indicates their conviction that it was authentically divine, and therefore authoritative. Absent the doubts of ecclesial deism, the widespread use of the Septuagint by first-century Christians reveals not only that this was the Old Testament of the early Church, but also that it therefore remains authoritative today.

Harris’s third point about the Septuagintal canon is that, with the advent of the codex (i.e., bound book) replacing the scroll, early Christians found the need to fill up the scores of empty pages of valuable paper in their bound Bibles. To do this, Harris argues, they “[n]aturally” would “fill it with helpful devotional material.” ⁵⁸ This, he concludes, led to a conflation of helpful books with scared books. The extent of Harris’s historical evidence for his view is that it seems to him the only plausible explanation for these texts’ survival in spite of a lack of support from the early Church Fathers.

First, Harris is wrong about an absence of support from the early Church in favor of the Septuagint. He asserts that “from considerable testimony of the first four centuries,” the “Apocryphal books were not then received into the canon of the Christian church.” After repeating the views of Origen and Melito in favor of the Jewish rendering of the Old Testament canon, he goes so far as to say that “[t]he single voice of antiquity in favor of the Apocrypha is that of Augustine and the Councils of Hippo (A.D. 393) and Carthage (397).” ⁵⁹ But Harris had just stated that there were some uses of Baruch by the fathers, and some other exclusions of Esther. ⁶⁰ Further, Origen’s own canon was not the same as the Protestant canon, as Harris also admits. Origen argues at length against Africanus regarding the validity of Susanna, and he also confirms Tobit and Judith:

Where you get your “lost and won at play, and thrown out unburied on the streets,” I know not, unless it is from Tobias; and Tobias (as also Judith), we ought to notice, the Jews do not use. They are not even found in the Hebrew Apocrypha, as I learned from the Jews themselves. However, since the Churches use Tobias, you must know that even in the captivity some of the captives were rich and well to do. ⁶¹

We see from Origen’s support for Tobias, as well as from the fathers who supported the inclusion of Baruch, that Augustine and the Councils of Hippo and Carthage were not alone in antiquity in favoring the inclusion of deuterocanonical texts. It is also unlikely that two councils of the early church–Hippo and Carthage, A.D. 393 and 397 respectively–would draw within their list of sacred books what had to that point been universally rejected. If even a majority of the Church’s leaders had rejected those books, their inclusion in the canon by St. Augustine (b. 354) and the North African councils would have created an uproar. But history records no such reaction. For this reason, Harris’s claim that with “one voice,” “all the important witnesses in the early church to about A.D. 400 . . . insist that the strict Jewish canon is the only one to be received with full credence”⁶² is false, as Bruce agrees. Bruce sees that the Councils of Hippo and Carthage “did not impose any innovation on the churches; they simply endorsed what had become the general consensus of the churches of the west and of the greater part of the east.” ⁶³ So widely held was the belief in the deuterocanonical books, that Bruce writes, “[i]n 405 Pope Innocent I embodied a list of canonical books in a letter addressed to Exsuperius, bishop of Toulouse; it too included the Apocrypha.” ⁶⁴

Second, even if there was an absence of support from the early Church in favor of the Septuagintal texts, as Harris claims, Harris does not give any reason to rule out the possibility that the Holy Spirit preserved these texts and guided the Church to include them. Harris implicitly presumes that the Holy Spirit did not act this way in the early Church, and instead offers the speculation that these books exist because they were filling in empty pages. This speculation or hypothesis has no more support than the deisitic assumption of the Holy Spirit’s non-intervention upon which it is based. Rather, the Septuagintal texts’ early appearance in the Church, opposition-less acceptance, and widespread propagation by Christians lead to the conclusion that these very Jewish books had been in use by Alexandrian Jews. The evidence I have provided here indicates that, at the time of Christ, Samaritan, Essene, and Alexandrian Jews used a canon different from the 39-book Protestant canon. Even the rabbis at Jamnia, who famously debated in the year A.D. 90 about which books were prophetic, gave the opinion that Ezekial should be “withdrawn.” ⁶⁵

As I have shown, Harris’s claim that there was an absence of support from the early Church is based on a weak hypothesis, and fails to account for contrary evidence. His historical claim that there was nothing but a single voice from antiquity favoring the inclusion of the deuterocanonical texts is demonstrably incorrect. His arguments to explain the eventual inclusion of deuterocanonical texts in Christian use–that they filled empty space in Biblical scrolls; that the Greek Septuagint that supported them lacked the regulative effect of Jewish tradition; and that the original Septuagint from before the temple’s destruction would have matched what the first-century Pharisaic leaders from Jerusalem used–are based on unreliable speculation and give undue regard for Jewish tradition. It remains that a major problem for the ‘original Hebrew canon’ theory is the lack of historical basis to conclude that any one Jewish group had the authority to pronounce and close the canon for other Jewish groups, or that any one of them could close the canon for Christianity.

The second reason that the ‘original Hebrew canon’ theory fails to answer the Canon Question is that it simply pushes back the question. By what criterion was the original Hebrew canon determined? Unless the answer to this deeper question can objectively produce a complete list of books belonging to the Old Testament canon, the ‘original Hebrew canon’ theory cannot be our criterion for determining the Old Testament canon. One theory Harris considers is that the Jews accepted as canonical those texts which were written by Prophets.⁶⁶ However, as he notes, six books in the Old Testament are of unknown authorship: Judges, Ruth, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, and Job. He takes comfort that “[n]ot only is it true that it cannot be shown that these books were not written by prophets, there is some evidence that they were.” ⁶⁷ But if the test of canonicity that the Jews applied was ‘prophetic origin,’ then either these books were known to be prophetic, or were prematurely canonized, since their authorship was unknown. Harris later states that the “Books of Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther are more problematical [than Job]. . . . We cannot prove that Ezra, Nehemiah and the author of Esther (Mordecai?) were prophets.” ⁶⁸ Harris believes, and I think reasonably, that the books must have been known to be prophetic when treated as Scripture, even if the authors’ identities are not known to us today. But if this is our defense of the canon, we are left once again relying on Jewish tradition in the formation of canon. And if we are relying on Jewish tradition, then we have no reason not to accept the tradition of the Alexandrian Jews who accepted the deuterocanonical texts. Because looking for the ‘works written by Prophets’ does not objectively produce a list of Old Testament scriptures, it does not answer the Canon Question.

Concerning whether the deuterocanonical books meet the ‘written by Prophets’ test, Harris rejects them first on an historical ground: [t]hey were all composed after the period when prophecy was recognized to have departed from Israel. ⁶⁹ But he does not state by whom prophecy was “recognized to have departed from Israel.”

There is no non-Christian authority who can establish this claim for Christians and the Church. There are only competing claims from an uncertain and distant period in history. Even if it is possible that, as a matter of history, the Jews in Christ’s time believed that the canon was closed before the deuterocanonical texts were written, there is no evidence that the Jews had made any such determination prior to the time of Christ, or even prior to Jamnia. Neither the majority, the Pharisees, those in Jerusalem, or some other group had the authority to do so for Christians. Were they to have made a conclusion on the canon, it would have been no more binding on the Christian than is their belief that Jesus of Nazareth is not the Christ.

Finally, the ‘original Hebrew canon’ theory must be rejected because not one of the early Church Fathers who were in favor of using the extant Hebrew text certainly pointed to the 39-book Protestant Old Testament. Among the early Church Fathers used by Harris to support his theory that the early Church sought the ‘original Hebrew’ to determine the proper canon are Jerome and Origen. Jerome, as is well known, made certain observations in the prefaces to his translations of certain deuterocanonical texts indicating his opinion that the Jews rejected them as non-canonical. But even granting the widely recognized authority of St. Jerome, his concerns about the deuterocanonical books do not indicate that the Church of his day accepted only the 39 books of the Protestant Old Testament.

Ultimately, Jerome explicitly stated his acceptance of the Church’s Old Testament over and against the opinion of the Hebrew scholars under whom he had studied. For example, in his preface to Tobias, he says:

For the studies of the Hebrews rebuke us and find fault with us, to translate this for the ears of Latins contrary to their canon. But it is better to be judging the opinion of the Pharisees to displease and to be subject to the commands of bishops.⁷⁰

His clear conviction is to be subject to the ruling of a Catholic bishop as opposed to the conclusions of Jewish Hebrew scholars. This same conviction appears in Jerome’s prolouge to Judith. There he states:

Among the Hebrews the Book of Judith is found among the Hagiographa, the authority of which toward confirming those which have come into contention is judged less appropriate. Yet having been written in Chaldean words, it is counted among the histories. But because this book is found by the Nicene Council to have been counted among the number of the Sacred Scriptures, I have acquiesced to your request, indeed demand.⁷¹

Clearer still is Jerome’s work Against Rufinus. In it he writes:

What sin have I committed if I followed the judgment of the churches? But he who brings charges against me for relating the objections that the Hebrews are wont to raise against the story of Susanna, the Son of the Three Children, and the story of Bel and the Dragon, which are not found in the Hebrew volume, proves that he is just a foolish sycophant. For I was not relating my own personal views, but rather the remarks that they [the Jews] are wont to make against us.”⁷²

From this we see clearly that Jerome, for all his studies with Hebrew scholars, did not hold to a 39-book Old Testament canon that matches the Protestant canon. In each of the three instances I have given, we see what Jerome’s actual test of canonicity was: that which matched the Church’s determination of the canon. Harris’s heavy reliance upon Jerome to support the ‘original Hebrew canon’ theory, therefore, is badly misplaced.

Origen, upon whom Harris also relies, while apparently a proponent of the “true Hebrew” texts, did not teach what is now the Protestant Old Testament canon. ⁷³ Origen excludes the twelve minor prophets from his own listing. Harris explains this conflict with his canon theory by speculating that the omission was merely an oversight by Origen.⁷⁴ But even if it were a scholarly error to leave out the Minor Prophets while listing the Hebrews’ canon as Origen understood it, Origen included in his listing the Letter of Jeremiah, a text from the Septuagint that is not part of the Palestinian Hebrew canon. ⁷⁵ Bruce similarly explains this inconsistency with the Protestant Old Testament by speculating that Origen’s inclusion was by oversight. This use of one’s pre-existing conclusions to determine what must be “oversight” and what must be accurate scholarship is the kind of post hoc rationalization to which I referred earlier. Only by painting the target around one’s arrow, rather than making judgments in a principled way, can one use Jerome and Origen in defense of the Protestant Old Testament canon.

Harris next examines the works of Melito, a second-century Bishop who travelled to Palestine to record the Hebrew canon. ⁷⁶ However, he too does not record a Hebrew canon aligning with the 39-book Protestant canon. Specifically, Melito omits the book of Esther. ⁷⁷ In fact, concerning Harris’s strong claims of universal use by the early Church Fathers of the Hebrew-now-Protestant Old Testament, there is an abundance of contrary evidence. Athanasius includes Baruch and the deuterocanonical additions to Daniel. ⁷⁸ Cyril includes Baruch and the Letter of Jeremiah, and excludes Esther. ⁷⁹ Gregory of Nazianzus omits Esther. ⁸⁰ Amphilochies notes of his fellow scholars that only “some include Esther.” ⁸¹ Epiphanius includes the Wisdom of Solomon and Sirach. ⁸² Theodore of Mopsuestia denies the divine inspiration of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes,⁸³ as well as Job, Song of Songs, and Ezra⁸⁴. Tertullian, who accepted “the whole instrument of Jewish literature,” and who gives the impression that he knows exactly what it contains, uses an Old Testament that is “evidently co-extensive with the Septuagint (including the ‘Septuagintal plus’).” ⁸⁵ He accepted Wisdom, the Letter of Jeremiah, and the Greek ‘additions’ to Daniel as authentic. ⁸⁶

Esther is a particularly difficult case for the advocate of the ‘original Hebrew canon’ theory to make from history. Of all the Old Testament books that the Church Fathers variously excluded from the lists of Old Testament books, Esther is the book most commonly omitted. Further, all of the Old Testament books, or fragments from them, have been found in the Dead Sea scrolls except Esther. ⁸⁷ Full or fragmentary portions of Tobit, Jubilees, and Enoch have also been found amongst the Dead Sea scrolls. ⁸⁸

Harris’s theory, that the Hebrew canon both matched the Protestant 39-book Old Testament and was used by the Church until Augustine came around, does not fit with the historical evidence. In fact, while there was no universal consensus among the early Church Fathers about the complete list of divinely inspired Hebrew books, there was a consensus among them that certain deuterocanonical Septuagintal (Greek) texts must necessarily be included. So widely was this held, Bruce writes, that:

Jerome’s dependence on Jewish instructors increased the suspicion of some of his Christian critics who were put off in any case by such an innovation as a translation of the sacred writings from Hebrew (with its implied disparagement of the divinely-inspired Septuagint). ⁸⁹

The translation from ancient Hebrew biblical texts was mistrusted, while the Greek Septuagint was seen as divinely inspired. As we have already seen, the Septuagint contained deuterocanonical texts as well as the 39 books of the Protestant Old Testament. Therefore, Harris is not right on both points, namely, that the Hebrew canon around the time of Christ matched the Protestant Old Testament and that the Hebrew canon was the Old Testament canon used by the Church until Augustine’s time.

Accepted by the New Testament:

Finally, Harris says, we can use the New Testament itself as historical evidence of what texts should be in the Old Testament canon. ⁹⁰ He argues that the books of the Old Testament were referenced in the New by Christ and the Apostles, and thus we can be certain of their canonicity: “Christ and the apostles have authenticated for us the thirty-nine Old Testament books and strictly avoided the seven Apocrypha.” ⁹¹ Harris supports this claim by noting that the New Testament “cites almost all of the Old Testament books, often by name.” ⁹²

One problem with that claim is that the New Testament also cites “scripture” whose referent we cannot even identify. To give an example, “[w]e have no idea what ‘the scripture’ is which says, according to James 4:5, ‘He yearns jealously over the spirit which he has made to dwell in us.’” ⁹³ If the criterion of the Old Testament canon is ‘that which the New Testament treats as Scripture,’ then we have here a grave problem, for in that case our Old Testament canon is incomplete. Also, the New Testament is full of themes and even direct phraseology from the deuterocanon. While there are dozens of these uses, here are two short examples. ⁹⁴ The mention in Revelation 1:4 of the seven angels petitioning before the Throne in Heaven is a reference to Tobit 12:15: “I am Raphael, one of the seven angels who enter and serve before the Glory of the Lord.” Similarly, Jesus’s reference to the “gates of hell” in Matthew 16:18 may be a reference to Wisdom 16:13: “For you have dominion over life and death; you lead down to the gates of the nether world, and lead back.” Careful examination of the Septuagint shows that Christ and the Apostles did not “strictly avoid” the seven deuterocanonical books.

In addition to the New Testament citation of “scripture” that is now lost, and the many references from the New Testament to deuterocanonical texts, the ‘adopted by the New Testament’ canon criterion faces one other major flaw. Judges, Ruth, Esther, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs are not cited in the New Testament, and so would fail to satisfy this criterion of canonicity and drop from our canon. Harris states that they are probably omitted from the New Testament “because of their brevity.” ⁹⁵ But this is no assurance of the propriety of including these five books, and no assurance of the propriety of excluding from the New Testament other brief texts circulated in Hebrew before or at the time of Christ.

If we develop from reason the canon rule that the New Testament’s use of Old Testament texts canonizes them, then we could similarly develop a rule canonizing these texts in the same form in which Christ and the Apostles used them. That is, if the New Testament’s acceptance of Old Testament texts instructs us about which texts we are to include in the Old Testament canon, then certainly its use of the Septuagint should be instructive regarding the authenticity and authority of the Septuagint, in the eyes of the early Church. According to Catholics United for the Faith, 86 percent of the New Testament quotes of the Old Testament are from the Greek Septuagint. ⁹⁶ If the Apostles had believed that the Septuagint contained uninspired texts, it seems that the Apostles would not have used it as their source of Scripture in composing the New Testament texts. But the Apostles did use the Septuagint in their teaching and writing. Therefore, the Apostles believed that the Septuaginal collection was the authoritative source of Scripture of the Old Covenant. It is ad hoc to acknowledge that Jesus and the Apostles treated the Septuagint as the written word of God, but then to deny tout court the canonicity of the books included in the Septuagint. We can imagine that if Christ lived in a time and place where the King James Bible was available, His use of it would be taken today by English Protestants as a divine seal on its canon. Bruce reaches an unsupported conclusion to get around this problem:

When we think of Jesus and his Palestinian apostles, then, we may be confident that they agreed with contemporary leaders in Israel about the contents of the canon. We cannot say confidently that they accepted Esther, Ecclesiastes or the Song of Songs as scripture, because evidence is not available. ⁹⁷

But there is no indication from history that the Jewish leaders in Israel at that time had rejected the deuterocanonical texts. As said above, we know that the New Testament authors–who, prior to the establishment of the New Covenant, would have been obedient to the Jewish leaders–widely used the Septuagint when they quoted the Old Testament. And, as also has been said, the Septuagint contained the deuterocanon as well as other texts beyond the the 39 books of the Protestant Old Testament. There is no evidence that there was an immediate change at the time of Christ’s death and resurrection among the Apostles in the use of the Septuagint. If they widely used it when quoting the Old Testament, then without such an immediate change, it seems to follow that they must have widely used it prior to Christ’s death and resurrection. So we have no reason to believe that the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem had, by the time of Christ, ruled against the Septuagint or the deuterocanonical texts. Otherwise, the deliberation of the rabbis at Jamnia in A.D. 90 about whether the deuterocanonical books were canonical would have been unnecessary. If Jesus and His apostles agreed with the contemporary Jewish leaders in Israel regarding the Jewish canon, then it is likely that these leaders either accepted deuterocanonanonical texts or had reached no conclusion concerning them.

In this section we have seen a number of reasons why the ‘original Hebrew canon’ theory fails to provide an objective listing of the Old Testament scriptures binding on Christians, and therefore fails to answer the Canon Question. There is no historical basis to conclude that any one Jewish group had the authority to pronounce and close the canon for other Jewish groups, or that any one of them could conclude the canon for Christianity. We find not one of the early Church Fathers adopting a 39-book Old Testament canon. In addition, the New Testament identification of the Old Testament cannot be the basis for the Protestant Old Testament canon because it proves too much and too little. The New Testament has many texts which quite probably are references to the deuterocanon, and also identifies as “scripture” a line of text the source of which is still completely unknown. The New Testament does not identify five books which Protestants do treat as canonical. The historical evidence also indicates that the deuterocanonical texts were still accepted at the time of Christ. We have no evidence that there was an ‘original Hebrew canon’ matching the 39-book Protestant canon.

C. NEW TESTAMENT APOSTOLIC AUTHORSHIP:

Another proposed canon test, this one tailored for the New Testament texts, maintains that the proper test for canonizing the New Testament is apostolic authorship, or at least apostolic origin. For example, William A. Sanderson and Carl Cassel have concluded that “the test of canonicity applied by the early church was apostolic authorship.” ⁹⁸ According to Ridderbos:

For the communication and transmission of what was seen and heard in the fullness of time, Christ established a formal authority structure to be the source and standard for all future preaching of the gospel. ⁹⁹

On this point the Catholic heartily will agree. And Ridderbos acknowledges that Jesus appointed an apostolate for this purpose. ¹⁰⁰ He goes on to make the claim:

we can establish that the apostles’ role in the history of redemption was unique and unrepeatable. Because they not only received revelation but were also the bearers and organs of revelation, their primary and most important task was to function as the foundation of the church. To that revelation Christ binds His church for all time; upon it He founds and builds his church.¹⁰¹

With some of this the Catholic will agree. The Apostles, in accord with their commission from Christ, were to be the foundation of the Church. So they were, in one sense, unique and unrepeatable. But for Ridderbos, the Apostles were only to “function as the foundation of the Church.” The Apostles themselves are not the foundation of the Church; they are mere receptacles of a message that is the foundation. This is similar to the error made by Calvin that I addressed above in Section II.A., in which he saw the “teaching” of the prophets and Apostles as the foundation of the Church. To Ridderbos, then, the divine message received by the Apostles is the only thing that they were to pass on to the Church. For Catholics and Orthodox, by contrast, Christ also gave to the Apostles an authority to preach and teach in His Name, and with His authority, as His representatives. And this missional and magisterial authority can be, and is, passed down through the laying on of hands by the Apostles or those whom they have ordained.

For Ridderbos, Christ founded His Church upon revelation, rather than upon the Apostles themselves. Ridderbos’ position implies that authority within the Church was restricted only to the divine message delivered by Christ, wherever that message was communicated. Relevant at present is the implication this view has on the test for canonicity. If the revelation qua revelation were our authority, and the Apostles were (historically) simply its “bearers and organs,” then authority within the Church passed with the communicated revelation, leaving no authority with the succesor bishops whom the Apostles put in place.

This suggests the following answer to the Canon Question: those books which contain the authoritative revelation given to the Apostles belong to the canon. Some have gone to extensive lengths to prove that the New Testament corpus is from the Apostles either directly or via an amanuensis. ¹⁰² But Ridderbos rejects this answer to the Canon Question, “because we can no longer establish with historical certainty what in a redemptive-historical sense is apostolic and what is not.” ¹⁰³ The nature of apostolicity was not limited to the twelve Apostles, and we are uncertain of the number or identity of persons who were in some way or other ‘apostolic.’ According to Ridderbos, as “historical judgments cannot be the final and sole ground for the church’s accepting the New Testament as canonical,” this method will not do. ¹⁰⁴

But Harris and Bruce both argue that Apostolic authorship is a necessary criterion of New Testament canonicity. ¹⁰⁵ Harris states, “The Lord Jesus did not, in prophecy, give us a list of twenty-seven New Testament books. He did, however, give us a list of the inspired authors. Upon them the church of Christ is founded, and by them the Word was written.” ¹⁰⁶ But this position faces two insurmountable problems.

First, its primary premise is incorrect. Christ did not give us a list of inspired authors, as Harris claims. Harris may have in mind the synoptic Gospels’ listings of “the twelve apostles,” but these listings do not, of course, include the Apostle Paul. Besides this, the synoptics do not identify the Apostles as “inspired authors.” ¹⁰⁷ If they did, or if we are to assume this attribute of apostolicity from reason, then it would seem that all of the Apostles’ writings were inspired, not just some of their writings. If that were the case, then we would have already lost some of Scripture, since we can be sure that there were other Apostolic writings besides those that have been canonized. For example, Paul wrote a letter to the Church at Laodicea which is no longer extant. ¹⁰⁸ Because there is no God-given list of “inspired authors” just as there is no God-given list of the New Testament books, the Protestant can only reach the conclusion that the twelve Apostles were inspired authors through the use of reason or extra-Biblical sources.

Second, this position, that Christ gave a list of inspired authors who wrote out the Word, must be able to prove Paul’s actual apostolicity in order to defend his epistles as having apostolic authorship. But Paul’s apostolicity cannot be settled without resort to Tradition. This position also must defend the ultimate apostolic origin of Mark, Luke, Acts, Hebrews, James, and Jude, books whose apostolic authorship is known only through Tradition. For the sake of brevity I will give an example of a Reformed defense of just one of these books. Harris notes that many scholars doubt the Petrine authorship of 2 Peter, which “has less external evidence in its favor than do any of the other books.” ¹⁰⁹ However, he notes, “there is no evidence that it is not by Peter, except debatable questions of style, and eventually the ancient church was convinced of its authorship.”¹¹⁰

But from the absence of evidence that 2 Peter was not written by Peter, we cannot reach the conclusion that 2 Peter was written by Peter, unless we resort to reliance upon Tradition. If Harris means to rely upon Tradition, as his words about the eventual conviction of the ancient Church imply, then without being ad hoc, he would also need to accept the deuterocanonical books. This is because the ancient Church eventually came to the conviction that the deuterocanonical books were canonical, as shown by the determinations of the Councils of Hippo and Carthage, already discussed above. Also, and of note, Origen, on whom Harris places great weight in concluding that the Protestant rendering of the Old Testament canon is correct, notes wide doubts in his day about 2 Peter’s Petrine authorship. ¹¹¹ Harris is being ad hoc by using Origen when it suits him, and rejecting Origen when it does not. This wide doubt abut 2 Peter’s authorship is itself “evidence that 2 Peter was not by Peter,” which evidence Harris denies exists (“there is no evidence that it is not by Peter, except debatable questions of style”). Also, because Origen wrote in the first half of the third century A.D., we can see how late in time the “eventual conviction” on which Harris relies was in coming.

It is striking that Harris would look to the eventual conviction of the ancient Church. If the ancient Church did not have a conviction about 2 Peter’s canonicity at the point in time closest to that epistle’s composition, then its later-reached conclusions would only become less reliable with the passage of time. Memories of actual authorship would have faded, and opportunities for the inclusion of ‘urban legend’ would have expanded exponentially. That is, the Church’s Traditions would have become less reliable unless the Holy Spirit gave a special grace to the Church to be preserved from error. But if this is Harris’s position, it is again a resort to the ad hoc, because as a Reformed theologian he would deny that the Holy Spirit preserved the Church from error in any other area.

As Ridderbos notes, the position that the early Church accepted what was of apostolic origin “fails to explain why the Epistle to the Hebrews was (again) finally accepted in the West, in spite of the fact that its Pauline authorship was most strongly doubted just by those who were most instrumental in gaining its acceptance, that is, by Jerome and Augustine.” ¹¹² That is, Ridderbos admits that during the original process of the formation of the New Testament canon, the criterion of Apostolic origin was not being applied. He also notes that this criterion cannot account for the rejection of the Didache, which was widely accepted in the early church and claimed apostolic origins for itself. ¹¹³ Finally, the spurious letter of Paul to the Laodiceans “had a place in many manuscripts in the West and apparently around A.D. 600 was still accepted as Pauline by Pope Gregory.” ¹¹⁴ For these reasons, this test of canonicity cannot be employed objectively without resort to “debatable” “historical judgments” as the “final and sole ground for the church’s accepting the New Testament as canonical.”¹¹⁵

As we have seen in this section, ‘Apostolic origin’ as a criterion of canonicity for the New Testament fails to provide an adequate answer to the Canon Question. It requires the use of extra-Biblical historical evidence in determining the canon, because Scripture does not list which ‘apostles’ wrote canonical books, does not list Paul with the listing of other Apostles, ad does not guarantee the apostolic authorship of a number of New Testament books. This answer to the Canon Question is not what Jerome and Augustine applies when they simultaneously accepted Hebrews’ canonicity and denied its Pauline authorship. The Apostles, and not merely the message deposited with them, were the foundation of the Church. But the ‘Apostolic origin’ canon criterion makes the assumption that the books containing the Apostolic message are the foundation of the Church and as such belong to the canon. Unless we rely upon tradition and fallible historical judgments to define the canon, we cannot prove with certainty which books are of apostolic origin, or which persons possessed the nature of apostolicity such that their writings would be canonized. For these reasons, this answer to the Canon Question is unreliable and, given the Reformed assumption that whatever authoritatively testifies to the canonicity of Scripture must be more authoritative than Scripture, places Scripture ‘under’ fallible extra-Biblical evidence.

D. WIDESPREAD ACCEPTANCE BY THE EARLY CHURCH:

A fourth criterion used in Reformed and evangelical writings on the canon is that widespread reception of a text by the early Church infallibly establishes its canonicity. ¹¹⁶ This reception or acceptance, these scholars maintain, is evidence that the Holy Spirit specially and infallibly led the Church to accept a text as canonical. ¹¹⁷ According to Harris, Bruce would even have it that the canon of the New Testament was first settled by a general consent of the whole Church, and recognition of inspiration of the scriptural texts only came later as a “corrollary” of canonicity. ¹¹⁸ Ridderbos addresses the Church’s acceptance of the canon this way:

Within the history of Protestant dogma as well, certain utterances have been made that appear to imply ecclesiastical infallibility with respect to the acceptance of the canon. It has been argued . . . that the church received a special gift of the Holy Spirit to enable it to establish the canon by infallibly distinguishing inspired from noninspired writings.
. . . .
Another Protestant viewpoint is that the church’s consensus about the canon arose of itself and so is the clearest proof that in establishing the canon, the church was guided by special providence; history itself, so to speak, offers the evidence for the canonicity of the New Testament. That consensus of the church, or rather that absolute authority acquired by the writings of the New Testament everywhere and without dispute, is then thought to guarantee the canonicity of these [New Testament] writings. ¹¹⁹

It would be ad hoc to claim that the “church” infallibly established the canon through widespread acceptance while otherwise being unable to arrive at any infallible conclusions, without a principled basis for affirming infallibility in the one case and denying it in all others. If the Church was not infallibly preserved from error in its early teachings on ecclesiology, iconography, justification, etc., there is no reason to believe it was so preserved from error when its canon came into widespread acceptance. To maintain otherwise would be a textbook case of special pleading. Ridderbos himself rejects this answer to the Canon Question, writing:

From the standpoint of the Reformation . . . reference to the church’s infallibility clearly was never intended to be understood as a basis for the canonicity of the New Testament. The very fact that such infallibility or inspiration is accepted solely with respect to the establishment of the canon and is thus to be qualified as an ad hoc inspiration or infallibility proves that the real order here is just the opposite.¹²⁰

That is, according to Ridderbos, claiming that the “church” could infallibly establish the canon by widespread acceptance denies the traditional Reformation understanding that the canon is the basis for any infallibility enjoyed by the Church. If the traditional Reformed view that the Church is infallible only insofar as it teaches Scripture is true, then the Church cannot infallibly declare (by widespread acceptance or otherwise) what is Scripture. Either the Church has authority to reach binding doctrinal conclusions, such as the extent of the canon, or it lacks this authority across the board, and thus cannot make any binding determination on the canon.

Besides this logical error, there are other problems within a sola scriptura framework with claiming as a criterion for canonicity that we accept those texts that received widespread acceptance by the early Church. Even if wide acceptance and liturgical use by the early Church would indicate a text’s canonicity, according to Ridderbos, considerations of historical acceptance were not used in the original process of forming the canon. ¹²¹ He returns from this assertion to his premise that the books were accepted because the Church was certain that these “particular books had been received from the hand of the Lord himself.” ¹²² He says elsewhere:

Yet it is absolutely incorrect historically to imagine that the process of selecting certain writings and of rejecting others took place automatically without argument and debate and so bears visibly the mark of a divine work. It is an undeniable fact, for example, that James, Hebrews, and 2 Peter could not acquire general recognition until the fourth century, that until the sixth century the Syrian church rejected Revelation and of the Catholic Epistles accepted only James, 1 Peter and 1 John, at the same time giving an apocryphal third epistle to the Corinthians a fixed place in the ecclesiastical canon. [Et cetera.]¹²³

There simply was no single corpus of texts universally accepted by the Christians of the early Church. The famous Vincentian canon, “that which has been believed everywhere, always and by all,” cannot be of avail to Protestants in defining the canon, because before or after the Reformation there has never been universal acceptance of the Protestant canon.

Bruce, in his section “Tests in the Apostolic Age” from his chapter “Criteria of Canonicity,”¹²⁴ sums up what appears ultimately to be his answer to the Canon Question this way:

By an act of faith the Christian reader today may identify the New Testament, as it has been received, with the entire ‘tradition of Christ.’ But confidence in such an act of faith will be strengthened if the same faith proves to have been exercised by Christians in other places and at other times–if it is in line with the traditional ‘criteria of canonicity.’ And there is no reason to exclude the bearing of other lines of evidence on any position that is accepted by faith.¹²⁵

That is, like Ridderbos, Bruce believes that the Protestant canon as it stands should be accepted as an a priori. But he is also willing to make use of any other evidence that will support the act of faith by which one initially recognizes the Protestant books as belonging to the canon. The prerequisite to using a supplemental canon criterion, including that which has been believed by “Christians in other places and at other times,” seems to be that it yield the conclusion that the canon as it stands in the Protestant Bible is correct. The measure of universal (or at least widespread) acceptance does not tell us which Christians, and from what times, get a vote in this election which is used as “evidence” to prop up confidence in the Protestant canon. It cannot explain why the views of Jerome or Origen should count toward ‘widespread recognition,’ whereas the views of Augustine, or the councils of Hippo and Carthage should not. It cannot explain without resort to ad hoc stipulation why widespread acceptance by the fourth century (or some other early time) is authoritative while the consensus of today’s 1.5 billion Catholic and Orthodox Christians regarding the deuterocanon is not.

E. THAT WHICH PREACHES CHRIST: A CANON WITHIN A CANON:

Lastly I will consider Luther’s own answer to the Canon Question, as well as other early Lutheran permutations. Luther answers the Canon Question by looking internally at the teachings of candidate books themselves. “‘What preaches and urges Christ’ was for Luther the criterion of apostolicity and canonicity.” ¹²⁶ That is, Luther started with Christ, the heart of the Gospel (or his own understanding of Him) and then reflected upon various texts to determine whether or not they preached and urged Christ. If so, they were canonical.

But Luther’s canon criterion has problems too. Objectively applied, this test would seem to allow ancient Christian art to be “canonical,” so long as it urges Christ. However, to give a more familiar shape to the outcome of this test, Luther relies on the Holy Spirit’s movement in his heart to perceive what is ‘preaching Christ.’ In this way, Luther’s view is similar to the theory in section II.A. addressed above. But if Luther’s canonicity test is a version of the Reformed view presented in section II.A., Luther’s application of it, as I shall now show, should be especially disturbing to proponents of Calvin’s view.

Luther spoke boldly against the value and even reliability of certain books that all Protestants treat as canonical. Within the Old Testament, Luther found Christ preached with special clarity in Genesis, Psalms, and Isaiah. ¹²⁷ However, according to Bruce, when challenged by the passage in 2 Maccabees supporting prayers for the dead, “that they might be delivered from their sin,”¹²⁸ Luther “found a ready reply in Jerome’s ruling that 2 Maccabees did not belong to the books to be used ‘for establishing the authority of ecclesiastical dogmas”¹²⁹. Bruce goes on to quote Luther thus: “I hate Esther and 2 Maccabees so much that I wish they did not exist; they contain too much Judaism and no little heathen vice.” ¹³⁰ Notice Luther’s special animus toward Esther; if the Spirit’s movement in his heart to see Christ preached is the measure of canonicity, there would be no principled basis for accepting Esther and rejecting Second Maccabees. Notice also that Jerome, while excluding 2 Maccabees, did accept Esther as fit for establishing doctrine. So if Luther “found a ready reply” from Jerome, it was only in an ad hoc fashion. It is worth recalling here that Calvin believed that “Scripture exhibits fully as clear evidence of its own truth as white and black things do of their color, or sweet and bitter things do of their taste.”¹³¹ To explain Luther’s animus toward Esther, among other books, Calvin would either have to deny that the Holy Spirit was aiding Luther in seeing black from white, or would have to admit that the canonicity of at least some texts is not as plain as black is from white or sweet is from bitter.

If Luther’s perception of the internal witness of the Holy Spirit about some New Testament texts were the measure of canonicity, the New Testament too would have to be altered. He said of Revelation that it “lacks everything that I hold as apostolic or prophetic.” ¹³² Further, he said of Revelation, “For myself, I think it approximates the Fourth Book of Esdras; I can in no way detect that the Holy Spirit produced it.” Readers may be familiar with Luther’s description of James as a “right strawy epistle.”¹³³ Because at some point in his life Luther did not see the Divine character of several books included in the New Testament canon, if his perception of the internal witness of the Holy Spirit were the measure of canonicity, several books have been wrongly included in the New Testament.

His German New Testament prefaces also set off Hebrews and Jude as lesser books, for he “did not recognize in them the high quality of ‘the right certain capital books.’” ¹³⁴ This view of a collection that gets at the heart of the Gospel, and lesser books that do not, naturally results in a “canon within the canon.”¹³⁵ For Luther, as for Lutherans today, “the ‘inner canon’ is a Pauline canon,” along with the Gospels. ¹³⁶ This test, coupled with Luther’s opinion against certain books, raises a difficulty for the canon-within-a-canon position. There is no principled standard to determine when a dispute about a book’s getting at the heart of the Gospel, or doing so in a lesser or disputed way, puts a text outside of the inner canon. Even if there were such a standard, it would be extra-biblical and, from the perspective of sola scriptura, effectively superior to the canon. That is because this procedural mechanism has the power, through its narrowness or broadness, to control what will and what will not be in the canon.

The Lutheran theologian W. G. Kümmel follows Luther’s approach. To him, the New Testament books are canonical only to the extent that each is in accord with the norm of the Christian faith, which is the “central proclamation” of the New Testament. ¹³⁷ This position gives rise to a circularity problem: the canon is defined by what preaches Christ, and we know Christ through the canon of Scripture. For this theory to work, we first have to know Christ from some other source besides the Scriptures in order to determine the canon. Hence comes the need for special revelation of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the individual considering whether a given text preaches Christ. As Ridderbos says of the canon-within-a-canon view:

The final decision as to what the church deems to be holy and unimpeachable does not reside in the biblical canon itself. Human judgment about what is essential and central for Christian faith is the final court of appeal. ¹³⁸

That is, by basing the canon on a human determination of what is “holy and unimpeachable,” the human determination is placed above the Bible. Scripture is relegated to a position secondary to human judgment. This characteristic of Luther’s answer to the Canon Question is indistinguishable from the supposed position of the Catholic Church, which depends on the judgments of the Church to determine the canon. For this reason, ‘that which preaches Christ’ as a criterion of canonicity also fails to provide an objective answer to the Canon Question.

III. AUTHORITY TO ANSWER THE QUESTION.

In our quest to determine how we know which texts are divinely revealed, we have found no answer to the Canon Question that does not itself violate sola scriptura by using some criterion external to Scripture to establish which books belong to Scripture. But even if one of the considered criteria could objectively yield a canon without resorting to extra-biblical evidence, the Protestant position suffers a deeper deficiency. As I shall argue, the advocate of sola scriptura, by the terms of his own doctrine, lacks the authority even to give an answer the Canon Question.

The doctrine of sola scriptura maintains that the Bible is to be the Christian’s sole infallible authority. The sine qua non (‘that without which’) of the Reformation is that no Church or other human judgment can be placed over Scripture. Power over the canon is power over Scripture itself because it is the power to eradicate a necessary part of the canon or to add a spurious part to Scripture. So the Reformed position is not any more compatible with the Church or other human judgment being placed over the canon than it is compatible with their placement over Scripture itself.

But the very act of answering the Canon Question inherently involves an extra-Biblical fallible human judgment, unless one is preserved from error by the Holy Spirit. This fallible human judgment, by defining the criterion of canon, exercises power over the canon itself. And as I just noted, power over the canon is power over Scripture. Therefore, absent the Holy Spirit’s preserving one from error, to answer the Canon Question is to exercise power over Scripture, and to place one’s judgment over Scripture. So to answer the Canon Question is to violate the doctrine of sola scriptura by placing something over the Christian’s sole infallible authority. If Protestants see the Catholic Church as placing herself ‘over’ Scripture simply by articulating the canon of Scripture, so too they should see answers to the Canon Question culled from human reason or extra-Biblical evidence as being ‘over’ Scripture. Since Protestants see the former as violating sola scriptura, there is no principled reason not to see the latter as a violation of sola scriptura.

If I propose a test for determining the canon of Scripture, I must have some basis for the claim that my test is objectively true. Analogously, first-century Christians could not address the question “Is Jesus the Messiah?” without first knowing how, or by what measure, the Messiah would be recognized. And that measure had to have some foundation before it could be accepted. Indeed, this foundation for measuring whether a person was actually the Messiah was established through the revelation of prophets, who themselves had to be tested for reliability and accuracy.¹³⁹ Likewise, the test that a given Christian community uses to define its canon of Scripture must have a reliable basis. The Catholic or Orthodox Christian will point to the work of the Holy Spirit in the visible Church as the basis for his articulation of the canon, which work is seen in sacred tradition. ¹⁴⁰ But because the Protestant system rejects basing the canon of Scripture on tradition or any other authority, and rejects that the Holy Spirit works infallibly through the visible Church, it must find some other basis for whatever test or criterion leads to the 66-book canon. If the basis for the Protestant articulation of a canon test is man’s reasoning, then the canon produced is no more reliable than the fallible reasoning that is at its base.

R. C. Sproul has recognized this rationale. He famously has stated that the classical Protestant position does not see the Church as having infallibly defined the canon. According to Sproul, unlike the Catholic position, which maintains that we have an infallible collection of infallible books, and unlike the modern critical scholars’ position, which maintains that we have a fallible collection of fallible books, we actually have “a fallible collection of infallible books.” ¹⁴¹ He reasons that because the Church is fallible, “it’s possible that wrong books could have been selected,” but he doesn’t “believe for a minute that that’s the case.” ¹⁴²

Sproul’s own personal confidence, the source of which he does not articulate, does not solve the fundamental problem his understanding of the “historic Protestant position” presents to spiritual descendants of the Protestant Reformation. If it is possible that wrong books were included in the canon, then it is also possible that right books could have been omitted. In this theological environment, our confidence in and obligation to submit to any scriptural text extends only as far as our confidence in the propriety of the text’s inclusion in the canon in the first place. In other words, we can have no more confidence in the infallibility of the content included than we have in the process by which it was included. But in the Protestant scheme, because the process which yielded the canon is fallible, Protestantism cannot have complete confidence in the content of its canon.

A fallible collection of infallible books cannot function as a binding authority, for “what can be more absurd than a probable infallibility, or a certainty resting on doubt?” ¹⁴³ I am reminded of my recent purchase of a “1080″ pixel television. I learned that my old DVD player sends out something like 480 pixels. Just as my 480 pixel DVD player cannot yield a 1080 pixel image on my TV, so too my fallible collection of Bible books cannot yield infallible assurance. Again, the text of Scripture can be no more binding than is our conclusion of which texts are to be included. The irony is that the Protestant Reformation was originally premised on Scripture’s ultimate demand for submission, which submission was supposed to lead to certainty and orthodoxy.¹⁴⁴

Like Sproul, Ridderbos rejects the Catholic view that the Church has the authority to define the canon. He attempts to maintain the fallibility of the Church without admitting to the fallibility of the canon as Sproul did. First, Ridderbos admits that “Catholic theology explicitly distinguishes the authority of the canon quoad se (“as to itself”) and quoad nos (“as to ourselves”), that is, the authority of Scripture in itself is not dependent on that of the church; only our acceptance of that authority, including recognition of the canon, is.” ¹⁴⁵ The Catholic Church does not take merely pious texts and convert them to authoritative, divine texts, but rather it determines, in a way that is binding on the faithful, what is already of divine origin, and as such, authoritative. By recognizing the quoad se/quoad nos distinction early on, Ridderbos means fairly to avoid the false claim that the Catholic Church believes Scripture’s authority to be dependent on, and subsidiary to, the authority of the Church.

But what he admits with the one hand, he seems to take away with the other. His objection to Catholic theology is that “the church exceeds its competence by placing itself beside, if not above, the canon.” ¹⁴⁶ He tells us that if we take Augustine’s famous quote, “I would not have believed the gospel, unless the authority of the Church had induced me,” to mean “that the recognition of the canon by believers rests on the authority of the church, then the church, in fact, usurps the place that properly belongs to the canon alone, thus, at the very least, equating its authority with that of the canon.” ¹⁴⁷ But a believer’s confidence in the canon resting on the authority of the Church does not place the Church beside or above the canon any more than a believer’s confidence resting on his subjective reflection upon the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit in his heart places his heart beside, if not above, the canon. Therefore, if Ridderbos’s critique of the Catholic Church’s relationship to scripture is accurate, then his own view of canonics would be subject to the same critique.¹⁴⁸

The Church does, with its authority, lead believers to accept the Bible, and this in no way places the Church’s authority ‘above’ the canon’s authority. If a mother explains to a child that he is to obey his father as head of the household, the mother has not thereby usurped her husband. If a captain of soldiers instructs his men to obey a particular order of their General, he has not thereby equated his own authority to the General’s authority. Likewise, if we believe the authority of Scripture on the basis of the Church’s authority, the Church has not thereby equated its authority to the Bible’s divine authority.

Returning now to the solution the Protestant must seek out, he must put forward an objective canon criterion having an authority above man as its foundation. The problem for Reformed theology with accepting that recognition of the canon rests on the authority of the Church flows from its preceding rejection of apostolic succession. As Ridderbos puts it:

The Roman Catholic idea is really that apostolic authority has been transmitted to the church and that the church is empowered by its head to make pronouncements about the canon, as well as tradition, that are themselves apostolic and canonical pronouncements. This notion we hold to be again in direct opposition to the history of redemption, in which apostolic power is entirely unique in character and is not capable of repetition or succession. ¹⁴⁹

But this claim that apostolic power is incapable of repetition is unsubstantiated. The original Apostles shared the characteristics of having been instructed by Christ personally, and having been sent, or commissioned, by Christ. It is true that the group of people who personally were instructed by Christ cannot increase in size today. In that sense, the original Apostles were a unique group, not capable of succession as ‘original Apostles.’ But if this explains Ridderbos’s conclusion, that “apostolic power is entirely unique in character and not capable of repetition or succession,” then he has glossed the distinction between being an ‘original Apostle’ and possessing ‘apostolic power.’ The authority that flows from being sent by Christ is an authority capable of repetition or succession, and can be bestowed on those who were not immediate disciples of Christ. That this distinct apostolic power can be handed down is thoroughly supported by Scripture and the writings of the early Church Fathers, as shall be discussed here in great detail in subsequent articles.

The canon did not fall from the sky as one collection, of course. As I argued in section II, under sola scriptura, the canon could not be the product of criteria that rely upon evidence external to Scripture, for such evidence would thereby be placed over the canon. And even if the Reformed system could articulate a canon criterion that did not rely upon extra-Biblical evidence, the very process of articulating a canon criterion would violate sola scriptura by subordinating Scripture to an extra-Biblical criterion. The fundamental problem, then, for the sola scriptura position is that it is left without any way of determining the canon that is faithful to its own paradigm of authority.

IV. CONCLUSION

Before Christians can ask the world to accept the Bible as God’s perfect revelation of truth, we must be able to answer the Canon Question: “By what criterion do we know what comprises the Bible?” But, as I have argued, Reformed theology is intrinsically incapable of answering this question. In spite of partially relying on a supposedly objective element–the self-attesting quality of true Scripture–the classical Reformed answer to the Canon Question ultimately depends upon the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit in the heart of each believer to resolve disputes where the objective measure does not produce agreement. For this reason, given the classical Reformed answer to the Canon Question, it is the subjective inward testimony of the Holy Spirit that must ultimately give assurance of a text’s canonicity. But since any two Christians who enjoy the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit, and who are new to Scripture, might not agree that a given text is canonical, this test is too subjective to be reliable. And because the inner-testimony criterion of Scripture is not reliable, it cannot be our final guide to determining the canon of Scripture.

In this article, I have considered a variety of proposals for reformulating the classical Reformed position to be more objective. But whether measuring Scripture by the ‘original’ Hebrew canon, by the books which are of Apostolic origin, or by those books which received widespread acceptance in the early Church, the criterion would necessarily rely upon extra-Scriptural evidence. I have also here examined Luther’s view that Scripture can be identified as that which preaches Christ; this criterion too necessarily relies upon extra-Scriptural evidence, namely, the individual determination of what preaches Christ. The Protestant critique of the Catholic Church’s view of its relationship to Scripture is that the Catholic Church effectively places itself ‘over’ Scripture by having the power to define the canon. But this critique would apply with equal force to any criterion that measures Scripture by extra-Biblical means. The means would be placed ‘over’ Scripture, and thus violate the doctrine of sola scriptura, which allows no other infallible authority besides Scripture itself.

Finally, the very process of answering the Canon Question violates sola scriptura. That doctrine permits no infallible authority in the Christian’s life save Scripture. But a person answering the Canon Question must employ fallible human judgment to craft the rule by which Scripture’s contents are to be selected. This judgment is extra-Biblical, and is placed over Scripture because it defines the canon. By placing this judgment above the sole permitted infallible authority, the process of answering the question violates sola scriptura.

A canon criterion that judges the canon based on Scripture’s internal attributes will always be of dubious reliability because it depends on subjective human judgment. A canon criterion that judges the canon based on evidence external to Scripture violates sola scriptura, or the Reformed assumption that necessarily accompanies sola scriptura that whatever authoritatively testifies to the canonicity of Scripture must be more authoritative than Scripture, by placing extra-Biblical evidence effectively above the Bible, which is to be the believer’s sole infallible authority. Therefore, every criterion available to Reformed theology to answer the Canon Question will either be of dubious reliability or in violation of sola scriptura (and hence not available to Reformed theology). The fundamental problem, then, for the sola scriptura position is that it is left without any way of determining the canon that is faithful to its own paradigm of authority.

I finish with a challenge, and one I offer with a heart longing for Christian unity. Approach your pastor, or the most knowledgeable Reformed teacher or theologian you know, and ask him how he is certain that the Protestant canon is correct. Ask him which answer to the Canon Question he follows, and why he chose that theory over the others. Wrestle together with him until you have found an answer that both yields the 66-book Protestant canon, and does not rely on subjective bosom-burning or extra-Biblical canon criteria. Let us pray to the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit from the depth of our hearts for Christian unity.

Belgic Confession of Faith, art. 2, available here. [↩]
Westminster Confession of Faith [hereinafter WCF], ch. I, sec. 1. [↩]
Id. [↩]
See 1 Peter 3:15. [↩]
Examples of some other variants are given in Ridderbos, p. 1. E.g., Johann Salomo Semler, author of Abhandlung von freier Untersuchung des Kanons (1771-1775), determined from his studies that what is canonical is “the list of books that might be read [by the early church] in public worship, the books that the bishops thought were the most suitable and in the best interests of good order.” Hermann Diem taught that the test of canonicity is that which “permits itself to be preached.” Ridderbos, p. 6. Ernst Käsemann sees the New Testament texts as contradictory and not the Word of God until such time as the Holy Spirit uses them to lead believers, “in an always new and contemporaneous way,” to gospel truth. Id. quoting Käsemann, Begründet der neutestamentliche Kanon die Einheit der Kirche? (1951-1952), p. 21. [↩]
Harris, pref. [↩]
Cited in F. F. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture (1988) [hereinafter Bruce], p. 275. [↩]
Harris, p. 178. [↩]
Id. [↩]
As another example of using a plurality of criteria of canonicity, Bruce uses the “subsidiary criteria” of antiquity and orthodoxy to measure what he views as the original criterion of canonicity–apostolicity. Bruce, p. 255-256, 259. Since apostolicity as a criterion of canonicity is not testable in the present day, because we cannot decisively conclude of which texts the apostles approved, Bruce needs both “subsidiary criteria” to identify the canon. This leaves Bruce in the same place as Harris, i.e., determining the canon by following ‘two lines of approach.’ [↩]
Belgic Confession, art. 5; WCF ch. I, sec. 5. [↩]
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion [hereiafter Institutes], book I, ch. 7, sec. 5. [↩]
Institutes, book I, ch. 7, sec. 2. [↩]
Id. [↩]
However, the question is infrequently taken up elsewhere. As Harris noted, “It is rather strange that more attention has not been given in theological studies to questions of canonicity.” R. Laird Harris, Inspiration and Canonicity of the Scriptures (A Press, 1995) [hereinafter Harris], p. 123. [↩]
Belgic Confession of Faith, art. 5. [↩]
Westminster Confession, I.V. [↩]
See Section III.D. below. [↩]
See Section III.D (discussing the lack of universal agreement in the early church), and III.E (noting Martin Luther’s inability to detect the influence of the Holy Spirit in the book of Revelation). [↩]
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, book I, ch. 7, sec. 1. [↩]
First Vatican Council, Sess. 3, Ch. 2, Para. 7. [↩]
Dei Verbum, ch. 3, para. 11. [↩]
St. Augustine, Contra Ep. Fund., V, 6. [↩]
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, book I, ch. 7, sec. 2, quoting Ephesians 2:20 (emphasis added). [↩]
Herman N. Ridderbos, Redemptive History and the New Testament Scriptures (Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing, 1988), intro ix. [↩]
Ridderbos, p. 35, emphasis added. [↩]
Ridderbos, p. 9. [↩]
Cf. Belgic Confession, art. 5. [↩]
Although, were it so simple, this position would seem strikingly similar to the canon falling from Heaven. [↩]
See Dei Verbum, art. 11; St. Clement of Rome, Letter to the Corinthians, ch. 45; St. Irenaeus, Adv. Her., bk. 2, ch. 28; St. Ambrose, On the Holy Spirit, bk. 3, ch. 16. [↩]
Fr. Henry G. Graham, Where We Got the Bible? Our Debt to the Catholic Church (Tan, 2004), p. 38-39. [↩]
See Ellen Flesseman-van Leer, cited in F. F. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture, p. 275. [↩]
Ridderbos, p. 9. [↩]
See section III.D. below for more on Luther’s view. [↩]
John Calvin, The Epistle to the Hebrews, the Argument. [↩]
See Christian Cyclopedia, Canon, Bible (Concordia Publishing House, 2000), available here. [↩]
Ridderbos, p. 10. [↩]
Ridderbos here admits that “Calvin’s reasoning may be open to criticism.” Id. [↩]
Bruce, pp. 281-282. [↩]
Ridderbos, p. 35. [↩]
(A Press, 1995.) [↩]
Harris, p. 130. [↩]
Id. [↩]
Harris, pp. 130-133. [↩]
See supra, part III.A. [↩]
For a discussion of the Jewish authority that likely existed to rule on the canon in the early days of Christianity, see the Catholic Encyclopedia article, Canon of the Old Testament, available here. [↩]
Harris, p. 182, quoting William H. Green, General Introduction to the Old Testament, the Canon (New York, Scribner, 1899), p. 124. [↩]
Harris, p. 182; Bruce, p. 40. [↩]
Bruce, p. 41. [↩]
The deuterocanon is that collection of canonical Old Testament writings in the Catholic Bible which Protestant writers commonly refer to as the “apocrypha.” By “apocryphal” here, I mean texts which both Protestants and Catholics would agree are outside the canon. As no original manuscript of the Septuagint exists, scholars have the burden of reconstructing its original contents through later manuscripts, most importantly the Codex Vaticanus (See here), Codex Alexandrinus (See here), and Codex Sinaiticus (See here). [↩]
Harris, p. 182-183. [↩]
Harris, p. 183. [↩]
Id. [↩]
Id. [↩]
Bruce, p. 50. [↩]
Harris, p. 183. [↩]
Cf. Bryan Cross, Ecclesial Deism, Called to Communion. “Ecclesial deism is the notion that Christ founded His Church, but then withdrew, not protecting His Church’s Magisterium (i.e., the Apostles and/or their successors) from falling into heresy or apostasy. Ecclesial deism is not the belief that individual members of the Magisterium could fall into heresy or apostasy. It is the belief that the Magisterium of the Church could lose or corrupt some essential of the deposit of faith, or add something to the deposit of faith.” [↩]
Harris, p. 184. [↩]
Harris, p. 186. [↩]
Harris, p. 185. [↩]
Origen, Letter to Africanus, available here. [↩]
Harris, p. 187. [↩]
Bruce, p. 97. [↩]
Id. [↩]
Bruce, p. 35. That is, “withdrawn, probably, from the synagogue calendar of public readings,” which could not be done to true divine prophecy. Id. [↩]
Harris, p. 154, ff. [↩]
Harris, p. 171. [↩]
Harris, p. 173. [↩]
Harris, p. 178. [↩]
The Vulgate prologues are available here. [↩]
Id. [↩]
Against Rufinus II.33 [A.D. 402]. [↩]
Cf. Harris, p. 131. [↩]
Id. [↩]
Bruce, p. 75. [↩]
Id. [↩]
Bruce, p. 71. [↩]
Bruce, p. 79. [↩]
Bruce, p. 81. [↩]
Id. [↩]
Id. [↩]
Id. Peculiarly, he includes these with his New Testament books! [↩]
Id. [↩]
Theodore of Mosuestia, Catholic Encyclopedia. [↩]
Bruce, p.84. This ‘Septuagintal plus’ is Bruce’s term for the Greek writings that are not part of the Palestinians’ Hebrew text. [↩]
Id. [↩]
Harris, p. 139; Bruce, p. 39. [↩]
Bruce, p. 39. [↩]
Bruce, p. 89. [↩]
Harris, p. 136. [↩]
Harris, p. 288. [↩]
Harris, p. 136. [↩]
Bruce, p. 52. [↩]
Further examples are available here. [↩]
Harris, p. 136. [↩]
Available; here. [↩]
Bruce, p. 41. His preceding paragraphs discuss the views of the Essenes and Samaritans on the Jewish canon, so the “then” seems misplaced. [↩]
Harris, pref. [↩]
Ridderbos, p. 13. [↩]
Id. [↩]
Id., emphasis added. [↩]
E.g., Harris, p. 260, ff. [↩]
Ridderbos, p. 31. [↩]
Ridderbos, p. 32-33. [↩]
Harris, p. 233, ff.; Bruce, p. 256, ff. [↩]
Harris, p. 247. [↩]
Matthew 10:1-4; Mark 3:13-19; Luke 6:12-16. [↩]
Colossians 4:16. [↩]
Harris, p. 240. [↩]
Id. [↩]
Harris, p. 270. [↩]
Ridderbos, p. 45. [↩]
Id. [↩]
Id. [↩]
See Ridderbos, p. 32-33. [↩]
E.g., Keith Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura (Canon Press, 2001), p. 319. [↩]
Id. [↩]
Harris, p. 124. [↩]
Ridderbos, p. 34, emphasis added. [↩]
Ridderbos, p. 34. [↩]
Ridderbos, p. 43. [↩]
Id. [↩]
Ridderbos, p. 35. [↩]
Bruce, p. 255. Note the plurality of tests in these titles. [↩]
Bruce, p. 283. [↩]
Ridderbos, p. 3. See also Bruce, p. 102; Paul Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther (Fortress Press, 1966), p. 83. [↩]
Bruce, p. 102. [↩]
2 Maccabees 12:45 ff. [↩]
Bruce, p. 101, citations omitted. [↩]
Id. [↩]
Institutes, book I, ch. 7, sec. 2. [↩]
Quoted in Bruce, p. 244. [↩]
R. Laird Harris, pp. 57-58. This was said in the preface to his 1522 edition of the New Testament. Luther, comparing James to the ‘main’ books of the New Testament, said it was “really an espistle of straw, for it has nothing of the nature of the gospel in it.” Ridderbos, p. 3. [↩]
Bruce, p. 243. Here Luther shows a favor for the what-preaches-Christ criterion of canonicity over the ‘widespread acceptance’ criterion, since he does not set off 2 Peter or 2 and 3 John in the same way. Bruce, p. 244. [↩]
See Ridderbos, p. 4. [↩]
Bruce, p. 244. [↩]
Ridderbos, p. 5, quoting W. G. Kümmel, Notwendigkeit und Grenze des neutestamentlichen Kanons (ZTK, 1950), p. 312. [↩]
Ridderbos, p. 7. [↩]
Cf. Deuteronomy 18:21-22: “If you say to yourselves, ‘How can we recognize an oracle which the Lord has spoken?,’ know that, even though a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if his oracle is not fulfilled or verified, it is an oracle which the Lord did not speak. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously, and you shall have no fear of him.” [↩]
Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, para. 1117. [↩]
R. C. Sproul, Now That’s a Good Question! (Nelson, 1996), p. 81-82. [↩]
Id. [↩]
John Henry Cardinal Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (U. of Notre Dame Press, 1989), p. 80. As if responding directly to R. C. Sproul’s qualifying statement that he doesn’t “believe for a minute that” wrong books were selected, Cardinal Newman went on rhetorically: “I believe, because I am sure; and I am sure, because I think.” [↩]
Here the words of Catholic convert Peter Burnett, California’s first governor, are worth noting:

But it did seem to me that those who reject Tradition, under the idea of attaining greater certainty, did, indeed, increase the uncertainty; not only by destroying a part of the law itself, but by attacking the credibility of the only proper and reliable witness to the inspiration and authenticity of the entire canon of Scripture. Peter Hardeman Burnett, The Path Which Led a Protestant Lawyer to the Catholic Church, p. 36.

[↩]
Ridderbos, p. 33. [↩]
Id. [↩]
Id. [↩]
See also Neal Judisch, Calvin on ‘Self-Authentification’ , Called to Communion. [↩]
Ridderbos, p. 33-34, internal citations omitted. [↩]

Tags: Authority, Canon, John Calvin, Luther, Reformed Theology, Sola Scriptura

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St. Joseph’s Vanguard And Our Lady’s Train » Blog Archive » The Canon Question | Called to Communion January 23rd, 2010 10:33 pm :
[...] The Canon Question | Called to Communion. Share: [...]
Jonathan Brumley January 24th, 2010 3:14 pm :
Thanks for all the work you put into this article, Tom. I’ve read all the top hits when you search for Apocrypha on Google. You pretty much countered every argument I read.

I am trying to understand how the Catholic position is better than the Protestant position. Basically the question is, how do you know what declarations/decisions/teachings of the Magisterium are infallible/inspired/God-breathed, and which are not?

For instance, I am confused about the difference between Trent and the earlier councils of Hippo and Carthage. How was and how is a council determined to be infallible? And is the “council” at Jerusalem (recorded in Acts) determined to be infallible, or not? (The reason I ask about Jerusalem is that it doesn’t show as one of the 21 Great Ecumenical Councils on NewAdvent).

How do we know what the declarations of the infallible councils really were? I am asking for a formal answer, but also a practical one – there are a couple of websites that record the texts of the councils (like this one: http://www.piar.hu/councils/ecum01.htm), but where is an authoritative version, and why?

Along these lines, how does the Orthodox Church determine which books are in the canon?

A further question is how do we know what is the correct interpretation of the Magisterium’s teachings? Are the teachings of the Magisterium considered perspicuous, unlike scripture? For instance, I have read Exsurge Domine, but I find it really difficult to understand which of the statements are errors in themselves being condemned, and which statements are actually corrections of Luther’s errors. (Exsurge Domine may not be considered infallible, so that may be a bad example).

I am hoping you have straightforward answers to these questions.

Also, this isn’t entirely on topic, – so I will be happy with a pointer to an earlier or later article if a long response isn’t due on this thread.
Tom Brown January 24th, 2010 4:38 pm :
Dear Jonathan,

Thanks for reading, and for the comment. It sounds like you don’t take umbrage with my critique of the Reformed position on the canon so much as you are concerned that a tu quoque reply may be in order. You said, “I am trying to understand how the Catholic position is better than the Protestant position. Basically the question is, how do you know what declarations/decisions/teachings of the Magisterium are infallible/inspired/God-breathed, and which are not?”

I attempted to demonstrate how the Reformed position cannot answer the Canon Question within the Reformed system’s own framework and limitations, viz. sola scriptura. Bearing that in mind, a primary difference between the positions, and a reason why the Catholic position is able to answer the Canon Question where the Reformed position is not, is that the Catholic Church can answer the Canon Question within its own framework. The Catholic Church does exist in a doctrinal environment which rejects as a source of infallible authority anything but Scripture. Therefore, the Catholic Church can articulate the scope of the canon without resting on fallible human determinations. Rather, it can make the bold claim that the Holy Spirit has actively guided the Church to a determination of the canon without admixture of error. The Reformed can make this claim too, and some do as I noted in section II.D, but this claim is ad hoc in that it denies the possibility that the Church was preserved from error in any other regard.

Then, I think you are asking, how do we know which of the Catholic Church’s teachings are infallible? How is it that the Catholic avoids the same position of building a claim of infallible truth (i.e., the Bible’s contents) on a fallible human judgment (i.e., the determination of the Bible’s scope)? Because the Catholic Church believes that certain determinations of the Magisterium are preserved from error. And unlike the Reformed system, this teaching authority can itself articulate which teachings are infallible and which are not.

About which council teachings are infallible, and about Orthodoxy’s answer to the Canon Question, I will need to answer these questions tomorrow evening (I’m at the airport about to catch a flight), or leave it to one of my fellows to answer.

Peace in Christ,
Tom
Jeff Holston January 25th, 2010 3:36 am :
This Canon question is so foundational, I’m very happy to see it being addressed it in such a substantive manner. As a new convert myself (April ‘09) I can say that the Canon issue was very pivotal in my learning to understand the need for a living Magisterium, and to appreciate how that Magisterium has functioned, down through the centuries, to guard the truth and to proclaim it.

Kudos, and keep up the good work!

Pax Christi,
Jeff Holston
Tysen Woodlock January 25th, 2010 4:55 am :
It is a question (i.e. the canon issue) that I find fascinating, even though I am no longer a Christian, and in fact no longer a believer at all. It is similar to the issue of authority in a political context, which has even to this day has not been definitively resolved to the satisfaction of many.
Ken Temple January 25th, 2010 10:09 am :
Hi Tom,
You certainly put a lot of work into this on the canon.

Footnote # 72, Against Rufinus 11:33 [A.D. 402]

The reference looks like 11. There is no “11″ or I cannot find it. Could you tell us where you get this reference? I cannot find “Against Rufinus 11″ at ccel nor newadvent.

Sincerely,
Ken Temple
Tim A. Troutman January 25th, 2010 11:39 am :
Ken,

It should be II as in Book 2 chapter 33. Thanks for pointing that out.
Tom Brown January 25th, 2010 1:18 pm :
Ken and Tim,

Thanks for pointing that typographical error out and getting to the bottom of it. I’ve corrected the document accordingly. Ken, it’s nice to think that some people really do check out our citations! They take effort, but make a world of difference in the final product.

Peace in Christ,
Tom
Tom Brown January 25th, 2010 1:21 pm :
Jeff, thank you for the kind note. I agree that this is a pivotal issue, and I hope that our Reformed readers will take note.

If you are Reformed and want to understand better why some of us have chosen to “Pope,” or if you want to challenge others to stop them from doing so, I believe you would be spending your time well to read up on this matter of the canon.

Peace in Christ,
Tom
Amy Jo Garner January 25th, 2010 4:21 pm :
I feel like I stepped into the Great Canon Debate when I started checking my RSS feeds today! This here and a Reformed/Calvinist perspective over at Parchment and Pen.

Tom, I was trained at a Nazarene university and came to the same conclusions you have here. I’ve not figured out how so many of my Protestant brothers and sisters have come to other conclusions. This issue, among others, led me from Protestantism to Anglicanism. I have not yet made the leap to the Catholicism — a few nagging issues keep me from it.

Thanks for the well-written and well-cited post!
Jeremy Tate January 25th, 2010 8:40 pm :
Tom,

Excellent article. I don’t know how you were able to summarize every reformed theory of the canon and prove it to be unworkable without writing a 300 page book. Every self consciously reformed Christian needs to read this. Personally, you’re point about Calvin inserting the word “teachings” into Ephesians 2:20 was extremely helpful. You’re right, the text says “they” were the foundation, but to Calvin it was merely their teachings.

Great work! Jeremy
JJS January 26th, 2010 1:29 am :
Tom,

Question: Why is the Catholic’s claim that “the church determines the canon” NOT tantamount to placing the church above Scripture, while the Protestant’s claim that “the Spirit’s inward testimony determines the canon” IS tantamount to placing that testimony above Scripture?

In other words, if a Catholic can say that Scripture is above the church, why can’t the Protestant say that Scripture is above the Spirit’s inward testimony?
Jonathan Brumley January 26th, 2010 9:42 am :
Hi Tom,

Yes I am wondering if a tu quoque argument is in order. Or, rather, I’d like to understand why not.

“The Reformed can make this claim too, and some do as I noted in section II.D, but this claim is ad hoc in that it denies the possibility that the Church was preserved from error in any other regard.”

Another way of saying it – I am trying to understand why the Catholic belief is less ad hoc. I don’t completely understand the boundaries of the infallibility of the Magisterium, but whatever those boundaries are, are not those boundaries also ad hoc?

Why, for instance, are the pope’s statements infallible only when meeting certain criteria (e.g. the statement must define a matter of faith of morals). Why is it only the pope who makes infallible statements, and not just any bishop of the Church? Are not all these boundaries ad hoc? How did the Church come to the conclusion that these boundaries of certainty were correct, without Christ establishing the boundaries in the first place? (Or did He?)
St. Joseph’s Vanguard And Our Lady’s Train » Blog Archive » An Open Letter to James White to Engage in the Canon Discussion January 26th, 2010 10:30 am :
[...] (Reformed Baptist Protestant apologist) James White, inviting him to engage the arguments of the Canon of Scripture article at CalledToCommunion.com: Dear Mr. [...]
The Canon Question – is it falliable? | The Church of Jesus Christ January 26th, 2010 1:00 pm :
[...] Okay, start here: [...]
Tom Brown January 26th, 2010 1:40 pm :
Dear Jason,

Thanks for contributing. You asked:

Why is the Catholic’s claim that “the church determines the canon” NOT tantamount to placing the church above Scripture, while the Protestant’s claim that “the Spirit’s inward testimony determines the canon” IS tantamount to placing that testimony above Scripture?

I’m not attempting to argue that there is such a distinction, since I don’t see a need for the distinction in my overall argument. I imply this through a qualification I made in a few places, including this preface:

There, I shall argue that, given the Reformed assumption that whatever authoritatively testifies to the canonicity of Scripture must be more authoritative than Scripture, each of them necessarily places extra-biblical evidence above Scripture in its effort to objectively identify the canon.

The assumption to which I referred is seen in various places in the article, for example, in the quotation accompanying footnote 26. I am speaking of an assumption made by the Reformed that does not exist within Catholicism. Like I said in the article, “If Protestants see the Catholic Church as placing herself ‘over’ Scripture simply by articulating the canon of Scripture, so too they should see answers to the Canon Question culled from human reason or extra-Biblical evidence as being ‘over’ Scripture. Since Protestants see the former as violating sola scriptura, there is no principled reason not to see the latter as a violation of sola scriptura.”

In this way, there is no need to make a distinction between the Catholic and Reformed views about which you were asking. My point is not that there is a distinction, but that the Reformed view is internally inconsistent or is ad hoc to see the the Catholic Church as placing herself “over” Scripture while denying that its own methodology of determining the extent of the canon is “over” Scripture.

It may help to add why the Catholic Church does not see itself as being “over” Scripture for having deliberated upon the extent of the canon. This is because the Catholic Church sees herself as having cooperated with the Holy Spirit in articulating the canon. Please see the text accompanying footnotes 21 – 23 for more on this. As she sees herself cooperating with the Holy Spirit, being guided into truth, the Catholic Church does not have the power to add or subtract from the canon, because to do so would exceed her power. (This is analogous to Pope John Paul II’s declaration that the Church has no authority to ordain women. Ordinatio Sacerdotalis.)

I hope this clears up the question for you. Please let me know if not.

Peace in Christ,
Tom
JJS January 26th, 2010 2:12 pm :
Tom,

Thanks for your reply. You write:

My point is not that there is a distinction, but that the Reformed view is internally inconsistent or is ad hoc to see the the Catholic Church as placing herself “over” Scripture while denying that its own methodology of determining the extent of the canon is “over” Scripture.

But are really only saying that the Reformed view, while as plausible as the Catholic one, suffers from a silly inconsistency? Can this whole thing be resolved if I simply grant that the Catholic view preserves Scripture’s authority over the church, but it’s just that I don’t agree with it, but prefer my own equally valid position?
Tim A. Troutman January 26th, 2010 2:47 pm :
Jason,

Hope I’m not intruding. If the Reformed view suffers from inconsistency then it is not as plausible as the Catholic view because the Catholic view is consistent.
JJS January 26th, 2010 3:39 pm :
Hey Tim,

OK, but if we sheepishly acknowledge our inconsistency, are we good? During this season of ecumenicity, there’s no reason to unnecessarily celebrate our differences, right?
Barrett January 26th, 2010 3:50 pm :
Gentlemen,

Reformed guy becoming Catholic here. For the sake of clarifying what is the issue here, Tom, is your charge that the Reformed accusation against Catholics–that Catholics put something external over the Scripture in determining the canon–is inconsistent, since they replace the Magisterium with internal testimony of the Holy Spirit? Or is it that the Reformed position on the canon–i.e., Scripture’s self-authenticating nature, with the Holy Spirit testifying with and by the word–is inconsistent with the facts of history/personal experience?

Jason, which of these do you hear Tom saying? Neither of these but something else?

Just trying to understand the exchange here.

Pax,
Barrett
Tom Brown January 26th, 2010 4:12 pm :
Dear Barrett,

Thanks for engaging in the conversation. My reply to Jason involved the first of the two arguments you noted, though both appear (though in slightly different form and wording) in my article.

Peace in Christ,
Tom
Tim A. Troutman January 26th, 2010 4:33 pm :
Jason – sorry I didn’t see what you were driving at. I’ll lay low and let you and Tom hash it out for a bit :-)
Tom Brown January 26th, 2010 4:39 pm :
Dear Jason,

You said the following in reply to my comment that the Reformed position is either internally inconsistent or ad hoc:

But are really only saying that the Reformed view, while as plausible as the Catholic one, suffers from a silly inconsistency? Can this whole thing be resolved if I simply grant that the Catholic view preserves Scripture’s authority over the church, but it’s just that I don’t agree with it, but prefer my own equally valid position?

I am ‘really’ saying that the Reformed position is either internally inconsistent or ad hoc. I am not saying that the Reformed view is “as plausible as the Catholic one.” I think you mistook this for what I did say, which was: “I’m not attempting to argue that there is such a distinction, since I don’t see a need for the distinction in my overall argument.”

Further, I deny that (if granted) this is a “silly inconsistency.” The Reformation is build on the foundation of sola scriptura, specifically, that the Bible is the Christian’s highest or ultimate authority on all matters of the faith. The Reformers rejected their (human) ecclesial authorities because, in the Reformers’ opinion, those ecclesial authorities had usurped Scripture. I have argued that if consistent and not ad hoc, the Reformed system would also need to reject whatever methods it has used to articulate the content of the canon of Scripture, because these methods would similarly usurp Scripture. Without a measure or determinant of the canon there can be no known corpus of Scripture, and without a known corpus of Scripture, there can be no sola scriptura. Without sola scriptura, once one has rejected sacramental ecclesial authority, one is left with no ecclesial authority at all. That is why I do not see it as a silly inconsistency, but as a critical one.

Regarding your question of whether “this whole thing be resolved if [you] simply grant that the Catholic view preserves Scripture’s authority over the church, but it’s just that [you] don’t agree with it, but prefer [your] own equally valid position?”, I say that the Catholic system does not preserve Scripture’s authority over the Church, but rather that Catholic ecclesiology preserves a proper understanding of the Church’s cooperative relationship to Scripture.

Peace in Christ,
Tom
Tom Brown January 26th, 2010 7:23 pm :
Dear Jonathan,

A tu quoque response is not in order because the Catholic position is not internally inconsistent or ad hoc with regard to the determination of the canon, whereas the Reformed position is internally inconsistent or ad hoc. I see now that your concern is with the latter possibility: “I am trying to understand why the Catholic belief is less ad hoc.”

If we assume for the sake of discussion that out of these two possibilities the Reformed position is ad hoc, then let me reiterate in what way it would be ad hoc. It would be ad hoc for the Reformed position to maintain that “no evidence outside of Scripture can determine the canon,” as it necessarily must, but simultaneously to allow extra-Biblical criteria such as the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit, or conclusions about the widespread acceptance of the early Church, to determine the extent of the canon.

Contrariwise, the Catholic Church is not ad hoc in its method of determining the canon. The Catholic Church believes that she was aided by the Holy Spirit in deliberating upon those texts that were claimed to be divinely inspired, and in selecting the correct ones from that set. She believes that her bishops have authority from Christ to reach such theological conclusions. Since the Catholic method of determining the canon is entirely consistent with the Church’s own ecclesiology, the Church is not being ad hoc in allowing for this deliberative process and conclusion about the canon. Note here that it is not the fallibility of the Reformed method that makes it subject to the inconsistency-or-ad-hoc criticism, so any supposed fallibility within the Catholic position would not thereby make it ad hoc.

You did ask about infallibility, though, so let me touch on that here. When the boundaries of infallibility are determined, they are determined by the Catholic Church. This is entirely consistent with the Catholic Church’s view of the teaching authority given to her by Christ. The boundaries are not always clearly defined, and in many areas of theology are still open to debate. The boundaries do not need to be clearly defined in all areas, because it is the episcopate, not its “teaching,” that holds authority over Christians. (Recall my discussion in section II.A. of Calvin’s insertion of “teaching” to Ephesians 2:20.) The faithful can look to their bishop, and trust in his absolution of sin, for their assurance of being in a state of grace. This is their concern, not formulaic accession to infallible teaching.

For more on the subject of infallible teachings and the Catholic Church, I know at least one good reference: Dr. Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma.

The pope is not the only agent of the Magisterium who can teach infallibly – the Bishops when speaking in a General Council can also do so. In either case, this only occurs when addressing immediately revealed truths, as Ott addresses in much greater detail. Note that their articulation of such Truth is not necessarily an infallible and perspicuous articulation – it could possibly be said better, but is truth nonetheless. These teachings on the teaching of Truth are not themselves ad hoc because their articulation is within the teaching authority that the Catholic Church understands herself to have been given by Christ. To be ad hoc, the Catholic Church would need to believe that she only had authority to teach in a way that binds consciences on theological subjects A, B, and C, but then also to teach in a binding way on her own teaching authority.

Last, you asked: “How did the Church come to the conclusion that these boundaries of certainty were correct, without Christ establishing the boundaries in the first place? (Or did He?)” By way of the Church, Christ did establish boundaries of certainty, because He gave the Church its teaching authority when he commissioned and anointed the Apostles. Because their episcopal successors can act in persona Christi in leading the Church, the Church is not ad hoc when it does the likes of defining the canon, or defining what is infallible revelation, binding dogma, common teaching of the faith, mere theological opinion, etc.

I hope this has been a helpful start at cracking the surface of this topic. A separate post may be in order, and certainly I hope that we will tend to these matters in more depth in a future article.

Peace in Christ,
Tom
Andrew McCallum January 27th, 2010 12:42 am :
It would be ad hoc for the Reformed position to maintain that “no evidence outside of Scripture can determine the canon,” as it necessarily must, but simultaneously to allow extra-Biblical criteria such as the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit, or conclusions about the widespread acceptance of the early Church, to determine the extent of the canon.

Tom,

You have raised lots of issues in your lengthy essay, but for now let me just address this one. You seem to be understanding us to say that the internal evidences are all that should be used to determine canonicity outside the context of the Church. But we do believe that it was the Church who made just these sorts of judgments. When the Church received the canon she did not flip coins to determine which books were in and which were out. The books that were received by the Church really did have the stamp of Apostolicity and the Church saw this and received them. There were internal evidences for the books because God inspired them, and the Church then by the Spirit’s power recognized them.

The exact books of the canon are not defined in Scripture but this does not obviate the general principle of sola scriptura. As an analogy take the US Constitution. We believe that the Constitution is the final bar of authority for all legal/civil matter in the US. We thus believe in sola-constitution so as to speak. Now if someone were to ask me how the elements of the constitution were determined I would appeal to the process by which the Founding Fathers defined the Constitution. But I would not use the Constitution to determine the elements of the Constitution, would I? But the fact that I in some sense appeal to something outside of the Constitution does not obviate my principle of sola constitution. The Constitution is still the final bar of authority even though I do not appeal to the Constitution when determining the elements of the Constitution. OK so far? All right, then the same basic idea holds for the Bible. I believe insola scriptura. in that the Scriptures is the final bar of authority for spiritual matters, but that does not mean that I am violating sola scriptura. by appealing to something (i.e. the Church) outside the Scriptures to determine the elements of Scripture.

Your Calvin quotes should not be taken as an all encompassing apologetic. If you are going to look for a specific apologetic against Catholicism I would go to someone whose purpose this was. I think you would better off quoting someone like Mathieson as Bryan did in the last big essay. From my standpoint both Protestant and Catholic appeal to the Church as the vehicle God used to form the canon. Four conceptual possibilities here are:
1) An infallible God worked through an infallible Church to produce the canon
2) An infallible God worked through a fallible Church to produce the canon
3) A fallible God worked through a fallible Church to produce the canon
4) A fallible God worked through an infallible Church to produce the canon.

I hope no sane person would choose option #4. Liberals often adopt or lean towards #3. Conservative Protestants generally understand #2 to be correct, while conservative Catholics see #1 as being true.

Now I now you will disagree with #2, but I would point out that #2 will produce an infallible canon just as much as #1 will. For this reason I would say that the Church being infallible is superfluous if what we are aiming for is assurance and infallibility of the canon. Note I am not arguing here that the Church is not infallible at this point, only that she does not need to be infallible for the canon to be infallible. The adoption of position #2 above does not (and has not) produced an epistemological crisis among the Reformed.

…the premise that all Protestants agree on the canon is false.

Yes, I agree. In fact most protestants don’t agree on the canon and don’t even care about the canon. However, in previous threads I have argued that there is no disagreement among the Reformed on the canon. And actually I think it could be argued that there is no disagreement among Evangelicals on the matter. For all the epistemological problems that Evangelicals have in other areas, on the canon they are solid. At least I cannot remember ever hearing of an Evangelical scholar who expressed any sort of doubt on this matter.
Mateo January 27th, 2010 1:11 am :
RCIA candidate here. Grew up in the Church of Christ. I was talking about the canon issue a while back with my brother, and he asked me, “You may know what books belong in the canon because the Catholic Church tells you, but how do you know you can trust the Catholic Church?” For some background information, my brother, I think, doesn’t really believe in the Reformed view that, as you explain, “the Holy Spirit [working in an individual person] is our immediate assurance of the canon’s truth.” But he does believe (or at least the Churches of Christ as a whole seem to believe) “that the reliability of Scripture appears from within Scripture itself,” in the sense that the Bible canon can be proven through its fulfilled prophecies, endorsement from Jesus or the Apostles (which you responded to in your article), historical accuracy, etc. Basically, he’s asking (and I’m asking): If one has to have a teacher to tell him what the right canon is (since reason alone isn’t enough and results in different conclusions and subjectivity), does he not also have to have someone to tell him to trust the teacher? It seems like perhaps a never-ending cycle. I have thought of responses, but they’re all pretty vague. What would you say about this issue?
Tom Brown January 27th, 2010 1:37 am :
Dear Mateo,

Fellow RCIA candidate here. Thanks for your involvement here. You asked:

If one has to have a teacher to tell him what the right canon is (since reason alone isn’t enough and results in different conclusions and subjectivity), does he not also have to have someone to tell him to trust the teacher? It seems like perhaps a never-ending cycle.

In a few of my responses above, I’ve touched on distinctions between my critique of sola scriptura and the Catholic view. I want to be clear that the reason-alone-isn’t-enough-and-results-in-different-conclusions-and-subjectivity point you raised, while a problem for sola scriptura, is not a problem to the Catholic. I wonder if what I wrote to Jonathan in #24 above explaining why this is not a problem for the Catholic clears up the issue for you. If not, please just let me know which part there isn’t clicking or seems wrong.

The Catholic can trust the successors of the Apostles. They are successive bearers of the testimony of the Truth of Christ that the Apostles themselves once bore and took to the nations. We can trust them as our teachers, and we can have confidence in their remaining in the truth, because they were sent and anointed by Christ. There is no vicious cycle in this understanding. I can believe the successor bishop today just like I could have believed the Apostle John nearly 2,000 years ago.

Peace in Christ,
Tom
T Ciatoris January 27th, 2010 6:44 am :
Hi Andrew,

I wouldn’t push the Constitution analogy too far. The Constitution was not written inerrantly under divine inspiration (pace some people I know!), and it is revisable under certain conditions. The ultimate bar of authority (in theory) is not the Constitution but the people of the United States, as the Constitution itself says in the Preamble: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union…do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” I think you’ll see from this why I get very nervous about comparing the composition and function of the Constitution to the Church’s recognition of the canon. Also, “sola constitutione” isn’t quite right even within the analogy, not only because the Constitution is founded on the authority of the people, fallible, and revisable, but because there exists a (very fallible!) “living magisterium” of sorts to interpret it authoritatively—the Supreme Court. In any event, I don’t think the Constitution analogy is going to get us very far.

Now for the important part. You wrote:

From my standpoint both Protestant and Catholic appeal to the Church as the vehicle God used to form the canon. Four conceptual possibilities here are:
1) An infallible God worked through an infallible Church to produce the canon
2) An infallible God worked through a fallible Church to produce the canon
…

And then:

Now I now you will disagree with #2, but I would point out that #2 will produce an infallible canon just as much as #1 will. For this reason I would say that the Church being infallible is superfluous if what we are aiming for is assurance and infallibility of the canon. Note I am not arguing here that the Church is not infallible at this point, only that she does not need to be infallible for the canon to be infallible.

You are, of course, correct that “#2 will produce an infallible canon just as much as #1 will.” I take it that Tom would readily agree that this is possible. But Tom has shown that, while internally consistent, this is ad hoc. So pointing out that #2 is a possibility without showing that it is not ad hoc does not really engage Tom’s argument.

To be a little tongue-in-cheek, I’d find #2 more convincing if I opened Matthew 28 and read, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and produce an infallible New Testament of divinely inspired writings, then infallibly collect them,” or if I read in John 16, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you to the infallible identification of the canon of Scripture.” Failing that, I think Tom’s right: #2 is certainly possible, but it’s ad hoc.

in Christ,

TC
1 Cor 16:14
Jonathan Brumley January 27th, 2010 7:23 am :
> 3) A fallible God worked through a fallible Church to produce the canon

That is a funny statement. In defense of liberal Christians, I don’t know any who believe in a “fallible” God! But it would probably be correct to say that many liberals believe that an _infallible_ God worked through a fallible Church to produce a _fallible_, (but inspiring) canon.
Jonathan Brumley January 27th, 2010 7:55 am :
Tom, thank you for the further explanation in #24.
Tom Brown January 27th, 2010 1:19 pm :
Dear Andrew,

You pulled out a quote of mine from this combox, and then said: “You have raised lots of issues in your lengthy essay, but for now let me just address this one. ” And then you levied a criticism: “You seem to be understanding us to say that the internal evidences are all that should be used to determine canonicity outside the context of the Church. But…”

Please consider reading the full article, or at least the portions of my article where I raise the one issue you think you are addressing. You should at least read Sections I and III, as well as the sub-section of section II that applies to the perspective you intend to defend or address — in this case I believe that is section II.A. In this case, you misapprehend what I “seem to be understanding” based on the statement of mine from the combox. In the article, I go in depth into addressing the classical and confessional Reformed position, and how it consists of both an objective and a subjective element. I argue from there in a way that leads up to my statement that you quoted, but I won’t repeat all that here.

As for your Constitution analogy, I embrace the analogy, and see your understanding of its as false. You said:

We believe that the Constitution is the final bar of authority for all legal/civil matter in the US. We thus believe in sola-constitution so as to speak. Now if someone were to ask me how the elements of the constitution were determined I would appeal to the process by which the Founding Fathers defined the Constitution. But I would not use the Constitution to determine the elements of the Constitution, would I?

As “TC” noted, the Constitution is not the “final bar of authority” in the United States. He noted that the Constitution was formed by the People. I would add that the Constitution has an Article III creating a judiciary that within the first generation came to interpret the Constitution over the other branches of government, and more importantly for our purposes has an Article V that allows for amendment by the Congress or a convention raised by the states. What you can amend at will you are superior to. So the Constitution cannot be the final bar of authority where it has an authority that can amend it. Further, the Constitution is a discrete unitary writing, not composed of “elements” (as you say) like the Bible is comprised of disparate texts written by many authors, some unknown, over the course of many centuries and even in several languages. The Constitution identifies itself (see, e.g., the Supremacy Clause), and is unmistakable in its scope. So you would use the Constitution to identify itself, because you have one piece of paper that says at the top: “We the people . . . do ordain and establish this Constitution.” I like the analogy to Scripture, because both are discussions of the relationship between an authoritative text and a system of governance. But in all these ways that I have noted, the Constitution does not and cannot lend support to the idea of sola scriptura.

You also criticized my sourcing, although you did not demonstrate where I misrepresented the Calvinist apologetic against Catholicism. Since I don’t know which Calvinist argument I should have included, I can’t tell how many more sources you would have me read. You said:

Your Calvin quotes should not be taken as an all encompassing apologetic. If you are going to look for a specific apologetic against Catholicism I would go to someone whose purpose this was. . . . I think you would better off quoting someone like Mathieson [sic] as Bryan did in the last big essay.

Again, please do read the essay. You will see that I not only made use of Calvin, but also heavily relied upon Ridderbos, Harris, and Bruce. Each of these authors addressed the Catholic view, but you will kindly note that I am not arguing against the Reformed critique of Catholicism. I am critiquing the Reformed view of the canon. So to an extent their critique of Catholicism is irrelevant to my premise. I left Mathison out because it added nothing to my argument, and was extensively covered in our last article, as you noted. I left out other Protestant authors whom I have read on the canon as well, because at some point you have to limit citations.

You said: “Four conceptual possibilities here are: . . . ” Please review the section where I discussed R. C. Sproul’s view on the fallibility of the canon. He takes up your possibilities in his work, which I cited.

You said: “For all the epistemological problems that Evangelicals have in other areas, on the canon they are solid. At least I cannot remember ever hearing of an Evangelical scholar who expressed any sort of doubt on this matter.”

Let me repeat here what I said about this in the article, because it may be worth repeating:

Today’s average Protestant does not study why he has the Protestant 66-book canon, and does not independently decide if the Bible handed to him is correct. Rather, he accepts as an a priori of his Protestant faith that the 66-book canon is correct. Belief that the 66-book canon is right is part and parcel with the small cluster of unifying evangelical Protestant beliefs. Since it is a unifying principle for most Protestants, we would hardly expect to see anything but universal agreement; thus we can draw no lessons about the canon from this widespread agreement. (See supra section II.A.).

I realize it’s a long article, but that had to be, because so many issues can spin off from my single argument. I hope you will get a chance to sit down and read it all.

Peace in Christ,
Tom
Spencer January 27th, 2010 10:18 pm :
Tom,

Thanks for writing this article. I can tell you’ve really put thought and work into it, and it’s quite helpful in addressing most of the Reformed arguments concerning the canon. Being Reformed myself, I don’t necessarily agree with the conclusion you come to, but I think your critiques of the arguments are good. There is one argument that (forgive me if you’ve addressed this and I somehow missed it) I don’t think was covered in the article that I’m wondering what you think of. It was articulated by Dr. James White in his Scripture Alone, and it basically goes like this: we have certainty about the canon of Scripture based on God’s purposes in giving it. Scripture tells us that God’s Word will not return void (Isaiah 55:10-11) and we know from the use of the Old Testament by the New Testament writers that the Word of God is intended to be used by the people of God. If God has inspired various books for the encouragement and instruction of His people, then it necessarily follows that He would guide His people (the Church) to recognize these books. Thus, we have certainty in our knowledge of the canon based on God’s purposes, and not the Church’s recognition of the canon. In his view, the declarations of the canon by the Church hierarchy were only later official recognitions of what God’s people had already been led to realize.

I can see a few holes in this view (though not nearly so much as in some other Reformed views on the canon), but I’m wondering what you think of it. It’s somewhat unique; I don’t think I’ve seen it used anywhere else.

Pax Christi,

Spencer
Mateo January 28th, 2010 12:26 am :
Tom,

You definitely answer part of my question when you say, “Since the Catholic method of determining the canon is entirely consistent with the Church’s own ecclesiology, the Church is not being ad hoc in allowing for this deliberative process and conclusion about the canon.” The fact that the ecclesiology of the Catholic Church is more consistent with regard to the canon (and many other areas, like doctrine and Church governance) than many or all Protestant Churches helps us to have a basis for having faith in the Bible, the written Word.

The other aspect of my question may even be slightly off topic. While we have a basis for believing in the Bible, what basis do we have for believing in the Catholic Church? For my brother especially, we avoid subjectivity with regard to the Bible (i.e., there is one, definitive Catholic canon as opposed to differing, individual, non-definitive views about the canon as there were with the reformers), but the question of which church is the right one is still up in the air. How can we know that the Catholic Church really does go back to Jesus without having to rely on our own, personal, subjective judgment (which is what we’re criticizing them, the Protestants, for doing with regard to the canon? Or are we?)?
Tim A. Troutman January 28th, 2010 10:01 am :
Spencer,

The theory you are proposing in no way leads us to believe that the Protestant 66 book canon is correct. If God did lead the Church into selecting the correct canon, which we believe He did, then it is the 73 book canon that the Church has always affirmed. (See our arguments under the “Nature of the Church” in our Note to Readers .
Tim A. Troutman January 28th, 2010 10:05 am :
Mateo,

The basis for believing the Catholic Church is, aside from our ecclesiological arguments that I referred to in #34, apostolic succession. We will have a lead article on that topic in a few months, but we believe in the Church which is in objective succession from the apostles, i.e. the rightful heirs to the gospel. The critique of the Protestant claim does not apply to our recognition of the Church because our recognition has objective criteria that in no way depends on our private interpretation of Scripture.
Andrew McCallum January 28th, 2010 10:10 am :
Tom,

You pulled out a quote of mine from this combox, and then said: “You have raised lots of issues in your lengthy essay, but for now let me just address this one. ” And then you levied a criticism: “You seem to be understanding us to say that the internal evidences are all that should be used to determine canonicity outside the context of the Church. But…”

I went through your points but I cannot answer everything in your essay without giving an essay length answer back. If we cannot break your essay down then I cannot explain where I think you have gone wrong. I was trying to speak to your 2.A point which is what I think you were focusing on in post #24. If I have to answer all your points at once, then I give up.

You and TC are reading way too much into my analogy. The Constitution calls itself the “supreme law of the land.” Now if someone where to ask me about the appropriate elements of the Constitution I would refer him to something outside the Constitution. If he were to tell me I was being inconsistent by appealing to something outside the Constitution if the Constitution was the supreme law of the land, I would say that he has misunderstood the concept of the supreme law of the land. So likewise I say that the Bible is our supreme law spiritually or is the final bar of authority. Now if someone asks me what the appropriate elements (books) of the Bible are I would appeal to something outside of the Bible. If they tell me I’m being inconsistent I tell them that they don’t understand the concept of being the final bar of authority (sola scriptura).

OK, so maybe that’s not a helpful analogy for you – fine. So let me just state bluntly that sola scriptura does not obviate the appeal to something outside scripture. The Church received the canon. We have no issues stating this. We are appealing to a source outside of Scripture but we are not contradicting sola scriptura. I hope this makes sense why this is true, but if not ask me.
I did read all of your Calvin quotes.

I did not want to comment on them all one by one because my point was the same with all of them. Calvin was not attempting a comprehensive apologetic to Catholics here. He has a Protestant audience here, and even when he speaks of Catholics he is speaking to Protestants with assumptions that none of us Reformed folks are going to question. But you are raising issues concerning the relationship between the Church and the canon that are not at issue when Protestant speaks to Protestant. They are good questions but Calvin does not address them. It would be the similar situation if an atheist read Calvin. He would think that Calvin was crazy and he would think that your answer to Calvin was crazy too. You and I share a great many assumptions concerning God, his revelation to us, etc that the atheist would reject. So we must have a different approach to the atheist when he asks us about Scriptures. And likewise Protestants need a different approach to the question of canon when we speak to Catholics than when we are writing to teach and encourage other Protestant about Scripture (which is what Calvin does in The Institututes and other works). I don’t mind talking about the other writers, but let’s do Calvin first.

I would not use Sproul as representative of the Reformed position. We have talked about his position here a number of times. It’s just not the way the Reformed go about the question in general. If you don’t believe me try asking some of your Reformed friends who have thought through the canon question.

It would be ad hoc to claim that the “church” infallibly established the canon through widespread acceptance while otherwise being unable to arrive at any infallible conclusions, without a principled basis for affirming infallibility in the one case and denying it in all others. If the Church was not infallibly preserved from error in its early teachings on ecclesiology, iconography, justification, etc., there is no reason to believe it was so preserved from error when its canon came into widespread acceptance.

This point does sort of get to my cases #1 through 4 which I hoped you might take up. It is not ad hoc to hold that the production of the Scriptures in infallible while other action of the Church are not. God promised that the production of the Scriptures were theopneustos so our claiming infallibility for the Scriptures via the agency of the Church stems from God’s promise that Scriptures are His words. But he never said that tradition was theopneustos and the RCC does not claim that tradition is inspired. There is a distinction between Scripture and tradition and thus we distinguish the work of the Church in receiving the canon and her forming traditions outside of Scripture. Could there be any more principled distinction than that God distinguishes the Scriptures? Now you may be able to come up with some reason why you think that de fide pronouncements of the Church are infallible, but I think you can hardly say that there is no principled distinction between the Church’s work in receiving inspired books and her work in writing uninspired traditions.
Randy January 28th, 2010 11:10 am :
Spencer,

The theory is OK. It does seem to lead to a 73 book cannon. If you don’t want a 73 book cannon that is a problem. The other feature of the argument is there are close parallels that can be draw with other doctrines. For example, the papacy and apostolic succession. To make the argument work you need to either accept generally that whenever God guides His people to recognize doctrine X that becomes strong evidence that X is true. It makes a lot of sense. But if you accept this principle and you know history it is going to make you Catholic. It is very close to the catholic notion of sacred tradition.

So I find it interesting that James White adopts this position. He must know that he is basically adopting Catholic thinking when he appraoches the cannon question that way. He has been invited to participate in this discussion. I hope he does.
Devin Rose January 28th, 2010 11:13 am :
Spencer,

Following up on Tim’s reply, I would also argue (against James White’s claim) that knowing which “Church” God revealed the true canon to is problematic since the two most ancient Churches, the Catholic and the Orthodox, have different canons and the set of Protestant Communities have yet another (different) canon.

Why would God allow his children to get the canon wrong for 1500 years?
Tim A. Troutman January 28th, 2010 11:21 am :
Andrew,

The Church received the canon. We have no issues stating this.

Andrew, we agree with you. But your “Church” is “whoever agrees with what I believe about the bible” and so is it any wonder that the “Church” in your mind received the Protestant canon?

This article is built on the arguments we made for the nature of the Church. Your conception of Church was refuted in the ecclesiological arguments referenced above. Please refer to those and if you disagree with us, then refute our arguments on those threads.
herbert January 28th, 2010 11:27 am :
Andrew, I am mostly just a reader (not a commentor) at C2C. But I just want to quickly ask you one brief question. In your last comment you wrote:

Could there be any more principled distinction than that God distinguishes the Scriptures?

“Which Scriptures are valid Scriptures?” Is the question here, correct? Is your query, then, not a textbook case of begging the question? Are you not assuming “the Scriptures” to be what you hold them to be despite the fact that “what the Scriptures are” is the very thing in question?

Any clarification would be deeply appreciated.
herbert
Bryan Cross January 28th, 2010 1:04 pm :
Spencer, (re: #32)

Thanks for your comments. Perhaps I can help answer your question. You wrote:

There is one argument that [...] I don’t think was covered in the article that I’m wondering what you think of. It was articulated by Dr. James White in his Scripture Alone, and it basically goes like this: we have certainty about the canon of Scripture based on God’s purposes in giving it. Scripture tells us that God’s Word will not return void (Isaiah 55:10-11) and we know from the use of the Old Testament by the New Testament writers that the Word of God is intended to be used by the people of God. If God has inspired various books for the encouragement and instruction of His people, then it necessarily follows that He would guide His people (the Church) to recognize these books. Thus, we have certainty in our knowledge of the canon based on God’s purposes, and not the Church’s recognition of the canon.

The argument is (roughly) the following :

(1) If we know God’s purposes in giving the canon, then we can have certainty regarding which books belong to the canon.

(2) We know God’s purposes in giving the canon.

Therefore,

(3) We know which books belong to the canon. [from (1) and (2)]

Then the conclusion is:

(4) The 66 books of the Protestant Bible, and only those books, belong to the canon.

There are at least three problems with this argument, for a Protestant.

First, you can’t get to (3), from (1) and (2), unless you fill in more precisely what you know about God’s purposes in giving the canon. If, for example, you know that one of God’s purposes in giving the canon was to give the 66 books, and only the 66 books, found in Protestant Bibles , then you could go from (1) and (2), to (3), and from (3), to (4). But, then there would be no point of the argument, because you would have loaded the conclusion into the second premise, and so the argument would be question-begging.

If, however, you don’t know that giving the 66 books (and only those books) found in Protestant Bibles was one of God’s purposes in giving the canon, but instead know that God gave the inspired books (whichever ones those are) for the purpose of instructing His people, that does not entail (3). Nor does (4) follow.

Second, if given what we know about God’s purposes in giving the inspired books “it necessarily follows that He would guide His people (the Church),” then Protestants will need to abandon ecclesial deism. It would be ad hoc to maintain that God will guide His Church to recognize the canon, but not guide His Church to recognize orthodoxy from heresy between 451 to 1517. (There is plenty even before 451 in the Church’s belief and practice that Protestants reject, as I point out in my ecclesial deism article.)

Third, if given what we know about God’s purposes in giving the inspired books “it necessarily follows that He would guide His people (the Church) to recognize these books”, then the books recognized would be the Catholic canon, not the Protestant canon. The criterion used at Trent was primarily: Which books are used in the liturgy in the universal Church? In the liturgy, after each reading the lector says, “The Word of the Lord.” So the question was, which books are used in the liturgy (as the “Word of the Lord”) throughout the Church universal? And the answer to that question is the canon declared infallibly at Trent. Those books had been used in the liturgy of the universal Church for over a thousand years. So if, given (1) and (2), “it necessarily follows that He would guide His people (the Church) to recognize these books”, then the conclusion of the argument would not be (4); rather, it would be the Catholic canon.

In the peace of Christ,

- Bryan
Ken Temple January 28th, 2010 2:57 pm :
Tom,
Your main point in the OT Apocrypha section (mostly on Jerome) was that no church father held to the exact 39 book canon of the Protestant OT. It must be pointed out that Trent’s (1545-1563) decision on the Apocrypha was the first ecumenical church wide council decision on the canon, and that it also disagreed with Hippo (393) and Carthage (397). ( on the issue of 1-2 Esdras) The New Catholic Encyclopedia acknowledges the differences and says that Trent “definitely removed it from the canon”, “it” meaning the material found in the LXX version of 1 Esdras. (Volume II: 396-397) 2 Esdras was the real Ezra and Nehemiah together; and Jerome corrected that mistake and separated them into separate books. In Trent, 1 Ezdras is Ezra and 2 Esdras is Nehemiah; but the LXX and Augustine and Hippo and Carthage included other additions that were deemed not canonical by Trent. How could Trent infallibly declare to be non-canonical what popes a thousand years earlier had accepted?

But, many early church writers/fathers disagreed with most of the current RCC Apocrypha – Athanasius, Jerome, Origen, Melito of Sardis, and also Gregory bishop of Rome wrote that Maccabees is not canonical and Cardinal Cajetan also.

Regarding Jerome, below are the two clearer statements about most of the RCC Deutero-canonicals (Apocrypha). These are clearer statements from Jerome than the ones you reference from prefaces to Tobit and Judith. There, Jerome seems to be saying he is submitting to the bishops orders to translate them into Latin, not that they are canonical.

In his commentary on Wisdom of Solomon and Ecclesiasticus,(In the Preface to Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon) Jerome states:

“As, then, the Church reads Judith, Tobit, and the books of Maccabees, but does not admit them among the canonical Scriptures , so let it also read these two Volumes (Wisdom of Solomon and Ecclesiasticus) for the edification of the people, not to give authority to doctrines of the Church.”

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf206.vii.iii.x.html
(In the Preface to Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, 393 AD)
This preface to the Scriptures may serve as a “helmeted” introduction to all the books which we turn from Hebrew into Latin, so that we may be assured that what is not found in our list must be placed amongst the Apocryphal writings. Wisdom, therefore, which generally bears the name of Solomon, and the book of Jesus, the Son of Sirach, and Judith, and Tobias, and the Shepherd are not in the canon. “

From Jerome’s Preface to Samuel and Kings:
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf206.vii.iii.iv.html

(Emphasis mine)
Tom Brown January 28th, 2010 5:46 pm :
Dear Spencer,

Thank you for bringing up Dr. White’s position. It is similar to some of the views I addressed in the paper, and is prone to some of the same criticisms. I rest on Bryan’s able response, and look forward to hearing what you think.

Peace in Christ,
Tom
Tom Brown January 28th, 2010 6:11 pm :
Dear Andrew,

You said, “If I have to answer all your points at once, then I give up.” Okay, if you read my section II.A., then my response to your statement that I “seem to be understanding [you] to say that the internal evidences are all that should be used to determine canonicity outside the context of the Church” is this: that is not what I am saying, or what I seem to be saying. I said that:

The classical and confessional Reformed answer to the Canon Question stresses that the Holy Spirit is our immediate assurance of the canon’s truth, and also notes that the reliability of Scripture appears from within Scripture itself.

And this:

Ridderbos provides a modern Reformed articulation of the confessional view. In line with Calvin, he argues that canonical texts are self-attesting (or self-witnessing) to the reader who is aided through faith by the Holy Spirit to see Scripture for what it is.

And this:

From this we see that his view consists of two elements: (1) that Scripture is self-attesting, (2) via the Holy Spirit leading the reader to recognize it as canonical.

So the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit is intrisic to the process. I argue this at length in section II.A. The role of the Church is taken up in section II.D. I noted in the preface to section II that the theories were not mutually exclusive.

I don’t think I did read way too much into the Constitution analogy, but attempted to show why it was helpful as a model of text-defining-culture. Maybe it proves too much against your view, but I did not take it too far. As I said, the Constitution identifies itself for what it is, unlike the Bible.

You said: “So let me just state bluntly that sola scriptura does not obviate the appeal to something outside scripture. The Church received the canon. We have no issues stating this. We are appealing to a source outside of Scripture but we are not contradicting sola scriptura.”

I’m glad to understand your view here, because it helps narrow in on our point of disagreement. You disagree with Herman Ridderbos, then. I addressed your statement in the following paragraph. Could you please tell me with which premise or conclusion you disagree? That would help me to focus my response:

But the very act of answering the Canon Question inherently involves an extra-Biblical fallible human judgment, unless one is preserved from error by the Holy Spirit. This fallible human judgment, by defining the criterion of canon, exercises power over the canon itself. And as I just noted, power over the canon is power over Scripture. Therefore, absent the Holy Spirit’s preserving one from error, to answer the Canon Question is to exercise power over Scripture, and to place one’s judgment over Scripture. So to answer the Canon Question is to violate the doctrine of sola scriptura by placing something over the Christian’s sole infallible authority. If Protestants see the Catholic Church as placing herself ‘over’ Scripture simply by articulating the canon of Scripture, so too they should see answers to the Canon Question culled from human reason or extra-Biblical evidence as being ‘over’ Scripture. Since Protestants see the former as violating sola scriptura, there is no principled reason not to see the latter as a violation of sola scriptura.

Again, I look forward to focusing in on the part of this paragraph about which we are not in agreement. If your point on “theopneustos” will come to bear, I will take it up then, otherwise please remind me I still owe a response. I’m short on time at this moment.

Regarding Sproul’s position not being a Reformed position, I agree to an extent, which is why I started with the classical Reformed position. However, I think Sproul’s position may gain popularity. I note that Sproul is Reformed, and is ordained in one of the more conservative Reformed denominations in the U.S. (the PCA). A recent “Parchment and Pen” blog post has staunchly supported the view as well. There is no one monolithic Reformed view, of course. I can take on the classical Reformed view, and I’m happy to interact with your Reformed view, but I can’t say Sproul’s view is un-Reformed, just that it is not the classical Reformed view.

Peace in Christ,
Tom
Spencer January 28th, 2010 6:21 pm :
Bryan,

Thanks for the response. You said:

First, you can’t get to (3), from (1) and (2), unless you fill in more precisely what you know about God’s purposes in giving the canon. If, for example, you know that one of God’s purposes in giving the canon was to give the 66 books, and only the 66 books, found in Protestant Bibles , then you could go from (1) and (2), to (3), and from (3), to (4). But, then there would be no point of the argument, because you would have loaded the conclusion into the second premise, and so the argument would be question-begging.

The argument doesn’t assume the number (or identity) of the canonical books in the premises; the purpose of the argument is to demonstrate that we need not accept the infallibility of the Church to know the canon with certainty.
Your summary of the argument is good, and I think Dr. White’s point is to show that God’s purposes in giving Scripture are sufficient to assure us that the canon was recognized correctly by the Church. Of course, this leads to the problem you pointed out, which is that the canon recognized by the Church seems to be the Catholic canon (Dr. White addresses this in his book a few pages later, but doesn’t exactly make the case that the early church rejected the Apocryphal books in any widespread way).

Second, if given what we know about God’s purposes in giving the inspired books “it necessarily follows that He would guide His people (the Church),” then Protestants will need to abandon ecclesial deism. It would be ad hoc to maintain that God will guide His Church to recognize the canon, but not guide His Church to recognize orthodoxy from heresy between 451 to 1517. (There is plenty even before 451 in the Church’s belief and practice that Protestants reject, as I point out in my ecclesial deism article.)

Scripture is the guide of the Church, and it is what makes Christians sufficient, trained for every good work (2 Tim. 3:16-17). God guides the Church–but He does so through Scripture. It is a misstatement of this argument to say, “God granted the Church infallibility on the canon, but then didn’t do it after that.” That would indeed be ad hoc. The argument, though, is not centered on what the Church is doing but on Scripture and God’s guiding the Church to recognize it.

To offer my own criticism of the argument, as you and other commenters have pointed out, the argument seems to fail primarily because it doesn’t square with the actual facts of what happened in Church history. I am not certain whether or not it is completely logical, but Dr. White’s ideal situation of the Church being led to recognize the canon is not what happened. At least some people in the early Church (such as St. Augustine) saw 1 & 2 Maccabees as being canonical. There was some uncertainty, at least early on, about whether or not Revelation, 2 & 3 John, and a few others books, were canonical. A Protestant could argue that the Church’s gradual recognition of these books fulfills Dr. White’s argument that the Church, though not infallible in herself, would be led by God to recognize the canon, but the Church also recognized (at various times) the Apocryphal books. Even if it can be shown that some, or even most, Christians rejected the Apocryphal books, the fact that there was uncertainty and debate for so long (Dr. White quotes Cardinal Cajetan as denying the canonicty of the Apocrypha, or at least casting doubt on it) doesn’t speak well of this view. And even if the reception of the Apocryphal books was a minority view, that would hardly prove that they are not canonical for the Protestant, given that the Protestant view on so many other things (baptism, justification, etc.) is certainly the minority view in Church history. The eventual rejection, too, of books like the Gospel of Peter and the Shepherd of Hermas, held to be canonical by some in the early Church, doesn’t seem to prove (from this argument, at least) that they were uncanonical–according to the Reformed view, the Church very early strayed from New Testament polity and doctrine on the sacraments and justification. I can certainly see the strength of the position that is being advocated in this article.

However, I have another question (my apologies if I seem inconsistent on kind of arguing both sides…) about the Catholic position. The Council of Trent was the first ecumenical council summoned under the Pope to recognize the canon, wasn’t it? And if so, how would the Christians before Trent know with certainty what the canon was?

Pax Christi,

Spencer
Tim A. Troutman January 28th, 2010 6:40 pm :
Ken,

How would Trent infallibly declare to be non-canonical what popes a thousand years earlier had accepted?

Which popes and where and in what capacity, exactly, did they do such a thing? Assuming, for the sake of the argument, that you’re right – if an ecumenical council doesn’t have the authority to do such a thing, then how did Martin Luther have the authority to do it? (Note: a pope getting the canon wrong is perfectly compatible with Catholic theology. I know you know this; just not sure why you’re bringing it up.)

At best your argument is an appeal to several individuals, none of whom, including the pope, carry the full authority of the Church. The lack of convergence among individual Catholics in the early Church is a well known fact, and the article mentions this. All the more reason to believe in the Catholic canon – it was delivered to us by the Church and not the university (unlike the Protestant canon).
Andrew McCallum January 29th, 2010 12:50 am :
So the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit is intrisic to the process.

Tom,

The way I would state this is that Protestants will speak of the various internal evidences that demonstrate that it is the Word of God. The books of the Bible were not just picked at random, they really do evidence the hand of God on them and we can see it. There certainly is quite a bit of discussion of such things in Reformed and Protestant literature. If an author has no reason to be discussing it, the role of the Church may not be mentioned. But we fully realize that if a Muslim or an atheist or a Catholic reads such a passage he will have objections over things that would not have been a point of contention with a Protestant reader. So you as a Catholic are bringing up the specific issue of the Church and we should not then talk about the internal work of the Spirit in His Word unless we also speak of the role of the Church. I think F.F. Bruce does this. He speaks of the various internal evidences of the Scriptures, but he then moves to the fact that these evidences were used by the Early Church to authenticate the various canonical books. So when you as a Catholic ask me about how we got the canon I would not want to refer you to a Protestant work that only spoke about the internal evidences of divine authorship unless the author placed these evidences within the context of the Church.

You disagree with Herman Ridderbos, then.

Here is Ridderbos from his work, Revelation and the Bible:
“The Church cannot “make” or “lay down” its own standard. All that the Church can lay down is this, that it has received the Canon as a standard and rule for faith and life, handed down to it with absolute authority.”

Ridderbos teaches here that it is the Church who receives the canon. I’m not sure about the quote from Ridderbos that you refer to. Perhaps he was critiquing another position? At face value it would seem to contradict what I have just quoted from him, but I don’t have access to the work you cite. Anyway, I agree with what Ridderbos says in my quote of him above.

But the very act of answering the Canon Question inherently involves an extra-Biblical fallible human judgment, unless one is preserved from error by the Holy Spirit. This fallible human judgment, by defining the criterion of canon, exercises power over the canon itself. And as I just noted, power over the canon is power over Scripture. Therefore, absent the Holy Spirit’s preserving one from error, to answer the Canon Question is to exercise power over Scripture, and to place one’s judgment over Scripture. So to answer the Canon Question is to violate the doctrine of sola scriptura by placing something over the Christian’s sole infallible authority. If Protestants see the Catholic Church as placing herself ‘over’ Scripture simply by articulating the canon of Scripture, so too they should see answers to the Canon Question culled from human reason or extra-Biblical evidence as being ‘over’ Scripture. Since Protestants see the former as violating sola scriptura, there is no principled reason not to see the latter as a violation of sola scriptura.

Well again, if it’s a matter of our individual judgment over the canon then we are all going to have different canons. But if like Ridderbos in my quote, we see that the Church received the canon and received it with absolute authority then we will reject the concept of each of us making our own judgment on the matter. And to qualify the statement about absolute authority, from my standpoint the difference between Catholic and Protestant is just where the locus of this absolute and infallible authority lies. Does it lie with the Church herself or does it reside just with God who works through the Church?
Andrew McCallum January 29th, 2010 1:04 am :
Herbert says this: “Which Scriptures are valid Scriptures?” Is the question here, correct? Is your query, then, not a textbook case of begging the question? Are you not assuming “the Scriptures” to be what you hold them to be despite the fact that “what the Scriptures are” is the very thing in question?

Herbert,

I assume you are speaking of the differences between Catholic, EO, and Protestant on the canon. I did not want to get into that with Tom because it seems like at the outset we can simplify the matter somewhat if we are just speaking of the Protocanonicals. But concerning what you would speak of as the Dueterocanonicals, it appears to us that while they did enjoy popularity in some geographies such as North Africa, there is little consensus during the Medieval Era as to the canonicity of these works. Tom talks about Jerome not arguing for the exact same canon than the Protestants, but there is little unqualified support for these additional books at this point and really through the Middle Ages.

So we can talk about the Protocanonicals as standing unquestioned after the time of Athanasius, but we cannot say the same of the Apocrypha/Dueterocanonicals.
Ken Temple January 29th, 2010 1:47 am :
Thanks Tom and Tim for some interaction.

the question should have been “could” –

How could Trent infallibly declare to be non-canonical what popes a thousand years earlier had accepted?

I guess I was assuming that some Popes did approve of the canons of Hippo and Carthage later in the fourth and fifth Centuries. Roman Catholic apologetics claim there was a council of Rome in 382 where Pope Damasus approved of the same canon as Hippo and Carthage.

Was there a council of Rome in 382?

If 1 Esdras was wrong at Rome, Hippo, and Carthage, and corrected by Trent, doesn’t that prove the whole infallibility of the Pope doctrine wrong?

Maybe the question should have been, “how could Trent declare to be non-canonical what some popes and earlier councils had accepted?”

The point is, Trent changed the earlier canons of Hippo and Carthage, on the Esdras issue, and that, according to RCC theology means that God was not guiding the Church infallibly for many centuries on that issue.

if an ecumenical council doesn’t have the authority to do such a thing, then how did Martin Luther have the authority to do it? In RCC theology the ecumenical council does have that authority; but not in Protestant theology. Truth is more important than the person/position/office itself, for humans. Neither Popes nor councils are infallible; only the word of God, the Scriptures are infallible.

Note: a pope getting the canon wrong is perfectly compatible with Catholic theology. I know you know this; just not sure why you’re bringing it up.)

Actually, I did not know that that would be compatible with Catholic theology. If a Pope is speaking in his pastoral capacity / office as Shepherd of the Church, and on the faith and moral issues, it would presumably be an ex cathedra statement, right?

Anyway, the main point is that you are claiming that God is guiding infallibly the church all through history, according to your view, isn’t that Ecclesial Deism when he let 1 Esras go for so long as thought to be canonical?

And wasn’t that Ecclesial Deism when the Arians were in charge for 60 years ??
Ken Temple January 29th, 2010 1:54 am :
Bryan wrote:

It would be ad hoc to maintain that God will guide His Church to recognize the canon, but not guide His Church to recognize orthodoxy from heresy between 451 to 1517. (There is plenty even before 451 in the Church’s belief and practice that Protestants reject, as I point out in my ecclesial deism article.)

If God allowed the Arians to get control and promote heresy for 60 years ( after 325 – 400 ?? I am not taking time to look it all up; you know what I mean); then who’s to say He cannot allow RCC doctrines and practices and heresies to be promoted from 451 to 1517?
Tim A. Troutman January 29th, 2010 10:27 am :
Spencer,

The Council of Trent was the first ecumenical council summoned under the Pope to recognize the canon, wasn’t it? And if so, how would the Christians before Trent know with certainty what the canon was?

The councils of Rome and Carthage, though not ecumenical, were ratified by a pope and did affirm the 73 books of the Catholic canon in the 4th century.

The canon, for the early Christians, simply meant the books which were allowed to be read in the liturgy. The canon never has been a collection of books to base the faith on. Christianity is not a ‘religion of the book’ like Islam or Judaism. This is an important point because had sola scriptura actually been believed in the early Church, we would have expected that the very first thing the Church would ever do is to clarify the canon, but this barely seems to be on their radar. Given sola scriptura, how could the Church hold a council on the Trinity when they didn’t know which books, alone, were inspired and authoritative ?
Devin Rose January 29th, 2010 10:33 am :
Spencer,

I would add to Tim’s reply that the Ecumenical Council of Florence in the 1400s [NB: before the Reformation] also listed the canon, though it did not dogmatically decree it (as Trent did a century later).
Randy January 29th, 2010 11:09 am :
Ken,
Actually, I did not know that that would be compatible with Catholic theology. If a Pope is speaking in his pastoral capacity / office as Shepherd of the Church, and on the faith and moral issues, it would presumably be an ex cathedra statement, right?
He needs to be intending to bind the consciences of all Catholics on the matter. Most teaching, even in papal encyclicals, does not meet this criteria.

Anyway, the main point is that you are claiming that God is guiding infallibly the church all through history, according to your view, isn’t that Ecclesial Deism when he let 1 Esras go for so long as thought to be canonical?
If 1 Esras was a central point of the faith that would be a problem. I don’t see it. It does not prove Ecclesial Deism when the church struggles to reach clarity on a matter. God can let us struggle and not let us fall.

And wasn’t that Ecclesial Deism when the Arians were in charge for 60 years ??
It sure looked bad than. But we often are tempted towards deism whne troubles arise in our personal lives. It is not surprising that some might be tempted to believe that when troubles arise in the life of the church. But we believe God is in charge as a matter of faith. History bears this out. God does preserve His church through any storm. The storm ends up proving Him faithful.
Tim A. Troutman January 29th, 2010 11:23 am :
Ken,

You said:

In RCC theology the ecumenical council does have that authority; but not in Protestant theology. Truth is more important than the person/position/office itself, for humans. Neither Popes nor councils are infallible; only the word of God, the Scriptures are infallible.

You said the “scriptures are infallible” which just begs the very thing in question in this article. Which Scriptures and how do you know? Given Protestant theology, the only way you can know which Scriptures are infallible is through fallible means, hence the inconsistency we’re pointing out. Instead of showing why your position is not inconsistent, you’re trying to show a contradiction in Catholic theology. Even if you succeed, you are still left with the problem of inconsistency.

If a Pope is speaking in his pastoral capacity / office as Shepherd of the Church, and on the faith and moral issues, it would presumably be an ex cathedra statement, right?

Yes, if he pronounces it as binding on all of the faithful. If you can show that the pope did this regarding the inerrancy of a book that Trent rejected as errant, then you will show him to be in contradiction with Trent. Also note that “canonical”, especially at that time, did not mean “part of the book which alone is inerrant and constitutes the sole basis for our faith,” but rather meant that it was eligible to be read in liturgy.

I’m not saying one way or the other because I’m just not very studied on the subject, but it is quite possible, maybe even probable, that they were answering two very different questions in regards to the canon at Trent and the earlier councils.

And wasn’t that Ecclesial Deism when the Arians were in charge for 60 years ??

We don’t believe in Ecclesial Deism; we don’t believe God ever left His Church nor will He.
Ken Temple January 29th, 2010 11:58 am :
Yes, if he pronounces it as binding on all of the faithful.

How does the RCC determine that? The precise definition was created in 1870 right? At the time of their decisions, pronouncements, encyclicals, etc. – they always intended everything to be binding on all Roman Catholics. Otherwise, why would they write a bull or encyclical? What is the purpose if it is not binding and not spoken from “the chair of Peter”? The explanation of the Papal doctrines and dogmas doesn’t make sense at all.

Take Boniface VIII’s statement in Unam Sanctum in 1302 AD- “It is necessary for salvation for every living creature to be submitted to the Roman Pontiff.” Sounds pretty binding.

Those conditions about intentions being read back into history honestly seem to be an “escape hatch” to justify anything in the past that might not be true in the future upon further investigation.
Tim A. Troutman January 29th, 2010 1:18 pm :
Ken,

This thread is about the canon; we need to cut off the papal infallibility conversation. Please see Newadvent, for example, on infallibility if you want to research it.

I think we need to re-stress that our posts shouldn’t be taken as open invitations to attack the Church in every area where one think she’s wrong. They are invitations to dialogue on the particular issues at hand, in this case the canon, and to mutually pursue truth. I’m not saying that your comments were totally irrelevant – I’m just trying to steer the conversation back on track. If I continue to answer these questions, then we’ll get far off topic. Thank you for understanding.
K. Doran January 29th, 2010 3:19 pm :
I second Tim’s request for the thread to remain as directly on topic as possible. With all of the work that you guys have done in dividing up the arguments between Protestants and Catholics into easily digestible chunks with well-defined segues between them, there is no need for our attentions to meander through seemingly-related but (for the moment) tangential issues. At issue is (a) whether there is a contradiction between sola scriptura and certainty regarding the canon, and less importantly, (b) whether the actual Protestant canon was built through any of the rules by which its apologists claim it was, or whether there are exceptions to each of these rules making the exact choice of books ad hoc.

I believe that Tom has conclusively answered both (a) and (b) in the affirmative, and it remains to the Protestant interlocutors to: (1) delve into the details of his argument without introducing general attempted tu quoques that can only be answered in the later articles that have not yet been posted on this site (or answered through some research of your own — come on guys!), and (2) to discuss the related spiritual and ecclesiastical (or maybe even personal) ramifications of Tom’s article. Both (1) and (2) are interesting and on topic — I applaud that which has appeared in those categories thus far.

Sincerely,

K. Doran
Ken Temple January 29th, 2010 5:52 pm :
Tim and all –
Ok, I will try to stick to the issue of the canon, but you guys are too restrictive, in my opinion; as all of these issues relate to each other. Your criterion for what is relevant and what isn’t relevant is very difficult to follow, because of the nature of how these issues are historically inter-related in church history and Roman Catholic vs. Protestant issues.

My post still awaiting moderation is on the canon and Jerrome’s statement on the superiority of the Hebrew over the LXX (end of Book II, 34, Apology for himself against the books of Rufinus)

and

On Book II, 33 – that “the judgment of the churches” Jerome is talking about is about using the Theodotian version rather than the LXX of Daniel.
Tom Brown January 30th, 2010 4:25 pm :
Dear Ken,

I’m sorry that I’ve been away from internet access for two days. If you have any questions about Tim’s concerns, or about our desired scope of this combox, please e-mail me at any time. You said:

Your main point in the OT Apocrypha section (mostly on Jerome) was that no church father held to the exact 39 book canon of the Protestant OT. It must be pointed out that Trent’s (1545-1563) decision on the Apocrypha was the first ecumenical church wide council decision on the canon, and that it also disagreed with Hippo (393) and Carthage (397).

Speaking technically, it is irrelevant to my main point what Trent decided. Trent post-dated the Reformation, of course, and my argument is about the canon and the Reformation. Please note that I do not have an “Apocrypha” section. Also, you treat the Aprocrypha as if it is a discrete set of texts that neatly go together. There is no such set. There is a set of deuterocanonical texts, but I am not sure if this is the exact set of texts to which you refer when you discuss the Apocrypha.

Regarding the Church Fathers you noted who did not accept the Catholic canon, including your take on Jerome, I rest on what I said to you by e-mail:

My primary contention is that it offends the doctrine of sola scriptura to define the canon by an extra-Biblical measure. Under this doctrine, one should reject a canon criterion that essentially measures the canon by fallible, extra-Biblical historical evidence. I agree completely with Ridderbos on this point.

You seem intent on proving that some of the early Church Fathers, and the later Cardinal Cajetan (a popular talking point for Protestant apologetics), did not stand behind the canonicity of the deuterocanonical books. That’s not relevant to my point that sola scriptura cannot essentially depend on fallible, extra-Biblical historical considerations, so I believe that getting into that historical debate would only distract us from the more fundamental point dividing us Catholics and Protestants on the canon of the Bible.

Peace in Christ,
Tom
Tom Brown January 30th, 2010 6:31 pm :
Dear Andrew,

We’ve been discussing my argument in this article that, from the classical Reformed view, the Holy Spirit is intrinsic to the canon-formation process. You responded:

The way I would state this is that Protestants will speak of the various internal evidences that demonstrate that it is the Word of God. The books of the Bible were not just picked at random, they really do evidence the hand of God on them and we can see it. . . . So you as a Catholic are bringing up the specific issue of the Church and we should not then talk about the internal work of the Spirit in His Word unless we also speak of the role of the Church. I think F.F. Bruce does this. He speaks of the various internal evidences of the Scriptures, but he then moves to the fact that these evidences were used by the Early Church to authenticate the various canonical books. So when you as a Catholic ask me about how we got the canon I would not want to refer you to a Protestant work that only spoke about the internal evidences of divine authorship unless the author placed these evidences within the context of the Church.

I think your canon criterion is that evidence of canonicity, including (but not limited to) the role of the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit, should only be discussed within the context of the role of the Church in determining the canon. Also, I think you are challenging my summarization of the classical and confessional Reformed position by saying that I read books meant for other Reformed people who already understood the broader context, so I wound up taking them out of context.

The works I cited in this article were not so limited in their scope or their intended audience. Besides, I come from the Reformed position, so am familiar with the context of these readings—I speak the language, if you will. Please note that I separately addressed in section II.D. the position that the determinations of the early Church define the canon. There I cited Bruce as an advocate of this position, just as you have cited him here in the combox. Since my response to that position (that the widespread acceptance of the Church defines the canon) is contained within the article, I will not repeat it here.

How would you describe the relationship between the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit and the eventual “widespread acceptance” of the early Church? My opinion, which I laid out in the article, is that the classical and confessional Reformed view cannot use the testimony of the Holy Spirit as mere supporting evidence of the determination of the Church.

Your quote from Ridderbos does not demonstrate that he believed the Church to reflect upon various evidence, including the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit, and then to determine the canon. In that quote he is only saying that the Church “received” (in the passive voice) the canon, as if it came in one piece. So he is not saying that the Church played a part in determining the canon. As I showed from his writings from several places (and I hope you can read the source some day, to see that it is not taken out of context), he believed that using “the gradually developing consensus of the church” to justify the canon “goes beyond the canon itself” and thus “posits a canon above the canon” contra “the order of redemptive history and the nature of the canon itself.” (Ridderbos, Redemptive History and the New Testament Scriptures, p. 35.)

You said that if “the Church received the canon and received it with absolute authority then we will reject the concept of each of us making our own judgment on the matter.” Not to be a ninny, but the use of the passive voice when discussing the Canon Question can lead to confusion. From what or whom did the Church receive the canon? If we can simply assume that the Church ‘did receive’, then we’ve side-stepped the Canon Question completely.

Peace in Christ,
Tom
Tom Brown January 30th, 2010 6:39 pm :
Dear Ken,

You said: “Your criterion for what is relevant and what isn’t relevant is very difficult to follow, because of the nature of how these issues are historically inter-related in church history and Roman Catholic vs. Protestant issues.”

In the context of addressing an argument, I define relevancy as that which makes a proposition more or less likely to be true. For example, if I argue that sola scriptura is invalid for the reasons given in this paper, then the truth or fallacy of papal infallibility is not relevant because papal infallibility does not make any of my premises more or less likely to be true. I agree that these things are all related in that the Reformation arose from the context of Catholicism, but that doesn’t make any particular point about Catholicism related to every particular argument against Protestantism. I hope that helps clear things up.

Peace in Christ,
Tom
Bryan Cross January 30th, 2010 6:44 pm :
Ken (re: #50),

In response to my comments in #41, you wrote:

If God allowed the Arians to get control and promote heresy for 60 years ( after 325 – 400 ?? I am not taking time to look it all up; you know what I mean); then who’s to say He cannot allow RCC doctrines and practices and heresies to be promoted from 451 to 1517?

I recommend that you read the ecclesial deism article. Christ’s remaining with His Church, the pillar and bulwark of truth, and the Spirit guiding her into all truth, does not mean that no individual person, parish, diocese or group of dioceses can fall into error. It means that the universal Church will never believe or teach [either in ecumenical council or by the one holding the keys of the Kingdom] as definitively to be believed or held, an error in matters of faith or morals. While many bishops were favorable toward Arianism in the fourth century, Arianism was never taught by the Church universal or by the Pope, as definitively to be held by all Catholics, nor was it ever believed by the Church universal, even though it was believed in certain parts of the Church.

By contrast, many of the Catholic beliefs and practices that Protestants rejected in the sixteenth century had been believed by the Church universal for over a millennium, and some had been taught by the Church universal as definitively to be held by all the faithful. For this reason, insofar as Protestantism rejects such beliefs and practices, it presupposes ecclesial deism.

As I pointed out in my previous comment, the criterion used at Trent to determine the canon was primarily: Which books are used in the liturgy in the universal Church? In the liturgy, after each reading the lector says, “The Word of the Lord.” So the question was, which books are used in the liturgy (as the “Word of the Lord”) throughout the Church universal? And the answer to that question is the canon declared infallibly at Trent. Those books had been used in the liturgy of the universal Church for over a thousand years. To reject those books, is therefore to presuppose ecclesial deism, because to reject those books, one must believe that Christ allowed the universal Church, for a thousand years, to declare falsely in the liturgy that these books were “the Word of the Lord”. Doubting the faithfulness of Christ in the ordinary Magisterium of the Church is no less a sin against faith than doubting His faithfulness in the extraordinary Magisterium. And that’s why it is consistent that Protestants deny the authority of both the ordinary and the extraordinary Magisterium. (For an explanation of the difference between these two, see paragraph 25 of Lumen Gentium.) This (objective) sin of rejecting the Church and her teaching and governing authority is an (objective) sin against faith. The reason why rejecting the Church is rejecting Christ (Lk 10:16), is precisely because ecclesial deism is false. And the reason why it is a sin to reject the Church and her divinely-appointed authority, is because doing so is to disbelieve what Christ has promised to do in and through His Church, never leaving her or forsaking her, being with her to the end of the age, preserving her as the pillar and bulwark of truth, and never allowing the gates of hell to prevail against her.

In the peace of Christ,

- Bryan
Ken Temple January 30th, 2010 6:49 pm :
Hi Tom, (and Tim and Bryan and other CtoC blogmasters)

Tom – Thanks for your answers and emails! They are thorough and clear and I appreciate you taking time to answer me.

You wrote:
Speaking technically, it is irrelevant to my main point what Trent decided.

It honestly seems that any point I seek to make is deemed as irrelevant.

Your main point is that the Protestant views of how we know which books belong in the canon depends on fallible human, subjective things like historical evidence and the internal witness of the Holy Spirit:

1. The internal witness of the Holy Spirit. (you cited Calvin, WCF, Belgic Confession for this) But, this is a principle derived from Scripture – “My sheep hear My voice, and they follow Me.” John 10:27ff

I John 2:27 seems to teach this also, that believers have an anointing of the Holy Spirit to be able to discern truth from error (because John taught them and they have at least some, if not most of the written Scriptures) are able to recognize the truth and don’t need an extra teacher in an infallible sense to make decisions for them, when they can read and understand the truth from Scripture themselves. They need teachers/pastors/elders to expound the word (Ephesians 4:11-12, I Timothy 3, 2 Timothy, I Peter 5:1-5; Titus), but they don’t need a teacher in the RC sense of an “infallible Magisterium” to tell them dogmatically what is the truth, because they have the truth, the Scriptures, the Holy Spirit, and can discern. If we are growing spiritually and submitted to the Spirit, 1 Cor. 2:14-16 says we have discernment and the mind of Christ. Galatians 4:6 and Romans 8:16 also teach us that we have the Holy Spirit and He testifies with our spirit that we are children of God. If we are His children, His sheep, then we can hear His voice in the Scriptures and discern what is God-breathed and what is not. Whatever is God-breathed is canon/standard/rule/criterion.

2. Early church testimony/ historical evidence (ie. Matthew is from apostle Matthew; Mark wrote for Peter ( Papias, Irenaeus, Eusebius) and statements such as Tertullian proposing that Barnabas wrote Hebrews (because he was a Levite (Acts 4:36 – details of the temple, chapters 7-10), “son of encouragement” – with 13:22 – brief letter of exhortation; and the fact that Barnabas is called an apostle in Acts 14:4; 14:14. That Luke wrote under Paul’s apostolic authority, etc. That John actually wrote Gospel of John, 3 letters, Revelation, and Peter wrote 2 epistles, etc. Jude and James were eventually accepted because of their internal qualities of being “God-breathed” and because they were the brothers of Jesus and James was the first bishop of Jerusalem in Acts 15 and he is called an apostle in Galatians 1:19 and I Cor. 15:7. We don’t mind depending on the early church for this information, because we have no other evidence that contradicts this; unless one wants to become liberal and give up faith in Christ, which is impossible for a true believer. (John Henry Newman seemed to talk about this in one of his essays – become either RC or unbeliever; he said Protestantism is no middle ground. By the way, does anyone know where that is? I cannot find it again, I forgot where I read it.)

3. Apostolic authorship or association with an apostle or under an apostle’s direction or approval. We know this from # 2 mostly, but also from internal indicators.

4. Internal self-attestation of the books themselves being “God-breathed”. They have the inherent quality of being Theopneustos. (“God-breathed”- 2 Timothy 3:16) This, along with no. 1, are usually used together for Protestants.

You are saying those 4 (or others that other Protestants may have come up with) are fallible means of knowing, (because 1 and 4 are subjective and 2 and 3 are the historical evidence/early church testimony, which is outside of Scripture itself; ie, not actually written out explicitly in the text for every 66 book of the Protestant canon.

Therefore, your claim is that it violates Sola Scriptura, because Sola Scriptura is the view that Scripture is the only infallible rule of faith for the church, but we use fallible means like historical evidence and the early church testimony (RCC = “tradition”) and fallible human subjective means like, “the Holy Spirit tells me in my heart”.

Do I understand you right?

My answer to that is that Sola Scriptura, as understood by Luther, Calvin, the WCF and other Reformed and conservative Protestants all the way to today have never claimed that Sola Scriptura included within it the requirement that all historical background knowledge about a book had to be written out explicitly in the text of a book. For example, Paul identifies himself in all his letters, but he doesn’t always write in every book, “This whole letter is the God-breathed word of God.” Matthew does not say, “I, Matthew-Levi, the former tax-collector and disciple of Jesus Christ, am writing this to you.” Mark does not say in his text, “I am John Mark, writing down the sermons of the apostle Peter and this is God-breathed Scripture and therefore canon”, etc.

Your demands on the texts of the Bible are too high, and they were never part of the definition of Sola Scriptura. Historical evidence and sound reason and the testimony of the Holy Spirit are good enough, because our knowledge is always fallible because we are fallible humans, and our faith is human faith and trust in an infallible God and a perfect Christ and an inerrant/infallible text of Scripture. We don’t need infallible knowledge or certainty because we don’t trust in ourselves. We are trusting with mustard seed faith in the infallible God who wrote the infallible texts.

Trent post-dated the Reformation, of course, and my argument is about the canon and the Reformation.

But Trent was the RCC response/reaction to the Reformation, right? It seems pretty connected to me.

My point is that Hippo (393 AD) and Carthage (397) and the so called “Council of Rome” in 382 under Damasus had a different canon than Trent did of those disputed books ( Apocrypha or Deutero-canonicals). (I Esdras) Trent changed what was understood by some parts of the Church and some leaders of the Roman Catholic Church for centuries, and we are all admitting that it was not clear to everybody at the same time, because of the statements that I showed you from Jerome, and Athanasius ( he clearly called most of the books of the current RCC Deutero-canonicals, “good for edification, but not in the canon” – Festal letter 39); just as Jerome did. They accepted those 3 sections of Daniel (Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, and the Prayer of the 3 Hebrew Children) because the manuscripts available to them at that time had them embedded in the text; and Baruch because the LXX Greek was attached to the LXX Jeremiah. ( I suppose. It is well known that the LXX of Jeremiah is very bad and no credible scholar relies on it over the Hebrew.) The others (Tobit, Judith, 1-2 Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach) were rejected by Jerome and Athanasius, Melito of Sardis, Origen, Gregory the Great (601) (maybe only Maccabees, I don’t know what Gregory thought about the others), and Cardinal Cajetan (1520s, at the time of Luther). There are others, but I mention only a few of the more prominent ones.

Please note that I do not have an “Apocrypha” section.

True, I was just calling it that myself without having to go back and spend time on your exact title of your section. Ok, I was talking about the “B. THE ORIGINAL HEBREW OLD TESTAMENT” section and the area where you have three footnotes, about Jerome and the references to Daniel (Apology for himself Against the books of Rufinus), Tobias, and Judith. The section where you discuss Jerome and footnotes 70, 71, and 72.

Also, you treat the Aprocrypha as if it is a discrete set of texts that neatly go together. There is no such set.

Enlighten me on exactly what you are getting at; as you may be thinking of a few minor points of different set of books, that both RCC and Protestants reject; or NT Apocrypha, or the Pseudopigripha, etc.

There is a set of deuterocanonical texts, but I am not sure if this is the exact set of texts to which you refer when you discuss the Apocrypha.

It is the same thing, right? – those books, written in the Inter-testamental period, (400 BC- around the time of Christ) accepted by Hippo and Carthage and were later pronounced at Dogma as “Deutero-canonicals” at Trent; minus 1 Esdras. Protestant call them “the Apocrypha” and Roman Catholics call them “Deutero-canonicals”; right?
Tom Brown January 30th, 2010 8:30 pm :
Dear Ken,

Thank you for taking up the points in my section II. My main point is not that Protestants depend on subjective things to determine the canon, but that is close. I summarized my point in the article’s penultimate paragraph – I refer to reliability vice subjectivity as a problem. I will take up your comments on my section II in turn, but I also refer you to my critical section III, in which I argued that even to answer the Canon Question violates sola scriptura.

1. You defended the internal-witness-of-the-Holy-Spirit canon criterion as itself being derived from Scripture. You mentioned, “My sheep hear My voice, and they follow Me” and the passage in 1 John 2 about our knowing truth from the anointing of the Holy Spirit.

As I argued, this method of determining the canon lacks reliability, and has been refuted by historical experience. If I told you that I believe the Book of Wisdom to be God-breathed (which I do), how would you refute this? Is the Holy Spirit leading me to its truth, or merely permitting me to believe it to be true? The Protestant 66-book canon did not appear until the 16th century. If that is the true canon, and if the Holy Spirit leads true believers to the canon, then we would have to conclude that God the Holy Spirit had a reason to wait for over 15 centuries before leading us into this important truth.

2. I think that you defended the canon criterion that accepts that which received widespread acceptance from the early church Early or that which was written by an apostle by stating generally that historical evidence supports the books in the Protestant Bible. That the testimony of the Church Fathers supports the likes of Mark’s writing for Peter is not in dispute. But how do you respond to my argument that, within the framework of sola scriptura, the use of such extra-Biblical testimony to define the canon places something outside of Scripture above Scripture? If you’re going with apostolicity, who were official “apostles” for this purpose, and how do you know? With what degree of confidence can you demonstrate that Mark, Luke, Acts, Hebrews, James, and Jude were apostolic? If this is the measure of canonicity, we can only be as confident in the canonicity of these texts as we are in their apostolic authorship.

3. If your #3 was distinct from #2, I’m not sure what you were arguing in #2.

4. Finally, you argue that the Biblical books themselves possess the inherent quality of being God-breathed. I took this up in #1 above.

You then restated my position and asked if you had it right. Except that I spoke of reliability vice subjectivity, I think your restatement is accurate.

You said:

My answer to that is that Sola Scriptura, as understood by Luther, Calvin, the WCF and other Reformed and conservative Protestants all the way to today have never claimed that Sola Scriptura included within it the requirement that all historical background knowledge about a book had to be written out explicitly in the text of a book. . . .
Your demands on the texts of the Bible are too high, and they were never part of the definition of Sola Scriptura. Historical evidence and sound reason and the testimony of the Holy Spirit are good enough, because our knowledge is always fallible because we are fallible humans, and our faith is human faith and trust in an infallible God and a perfect Christ and an inerrant/infallible text of Scripture. We don’t need infallible knowledge or certainty because we don’t trust in ourselves.

Regarding whether the doctrine of sola scriptura includes within its reach the evidence considered when determining the canon, do you disagree with my definition of the doctrine of sola scriptura? I take it that your answer is “no”, since you say that my demands on the texts of the Bible are too high. You seem to be agreeing with R. C. Sproul in your belief that our knowledge of the contents of the infallible Bible rest on fallible human determinations. I addressed this in the article as follows:

If it is possible that wrong books were included in the canon, then it is also possible that right books could have been omitted. In this theological environment, our confidence in and obligation to submit to any scriptural text extends only as far as our confidence in the propriety of the text’s inclusion in the canon in the first place. In other words, we can have no more confidence in the infallibility of the content included than we have in the process by which it was included. But in the Protestant scheme, because the process which yielded the canon is fallible, Protestantism cannot have complete confidence in the content of its canon.

I would be curious to hear your response to this. How compelling is this view of the canon for non-Christians to whom we witness, and whose trust we hope to win?

Quickly, regarding the canons of Hippo, Carthage, and Trent, Carthage and Hippo do not need to agree perfectly with Trent for my point to stand. They show that the 4th century Church did not use a Protestant 39-book Old Testament. Note that Trent’s attention to the canon wasn’t an exercise in futility; the previous councils had not been General (universal), so were not binding on the entire Church.

Quickly, regarding the word “apocrypha,” its use can lead to confusion, as I am confused by yours. If you mean to refer to the texts accepted by Catholics but rejected by Protestants, it might help to refer instead to “the Catholic deuterocanon,” or even “the so-called deuterocanon” if you prefer. There are other texts that both Protestants and Catholic would call apocryphal. When the original KJV included apocryphal books (for edifiication), it included the deuterocanon plus other texts.

Peace in Christ,
Tom
Andrew McCallum January 31st, 2010 5:07 pm :
Tom, you said:
I think your canon criterion is that evidence of canonicity, including (but not limited to) the role of the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit, should only be discussed within the context of the role of the Church in determining the canon.

Tom,

We all we have to address the issue of the role that the Church played in God’s work of writing of Scriptures and their collection in the canon. The Church’s role is inescapable and the Protestant who speaks of relying on his judgment to determine the canon is just being less thn intellectually honest IMO.

Also, I think you are challenging my summarization of the classical and confessional Reformed position by saying that I read books meant for other Reformed people who already understood the broader context, so I wound up taking them out of context.

Here I just wanted to point out that in many Protestant writings the role of the Church is not under consieration because there is no point of dispute to be resolved. For one Protestant speaking to another, if they are already in agreement about the role of hte Church in receiving the canon, the discussion will likely focus on the criteria that an inpried book demoinstrates or does not demonstrate. In such cases the writer is not trying to defend any and all critiques of the formation of the canon. We fully realize that a Muslim or an atheist or a Catholic will have objections which just are not being addressed in the work under consideration. So it’s not that I don’t think you should be considering Calvin for instance, just that you should note that what is there may not be camprehensive apologetic on the matter of the reception of the canon.

How would you describe the relationship between the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit and the eventual “widespread acceptance” of the early Church?

There is a very real sense in which the “proof” of the fact that God has inspired certain texts is that they do what God intended them to do. God has promied that His Word will accomplish certain things. If those promises never came true then these promises would be rather hollow. So God does impress on the life of the individual believer such proofs and these proofs are the same ones that believers have experienced for 2000 years. They are the same promises that we hear the ECF’s speak of so many centuries ago. But the methodology by which the texts were collected was not some sort of collective consciousness of all believers, it was by the peculiar work of the Church that God accomplished this. I don’t find any contradiction between speaking of God’s using the Bible to transform the life of the individual believer and His work in establishing the collection of the books that are inspired through the agency of His Church.

You said that if “the Church received the canon and received it with absolute authority then we will reject the concept of each of us making our own judgment on the matter.” Not to be a ninny, but the use of the passive voice when discussing the Canon Question can lead to confusion. From what or whom did the Church receive the canon? If we can simply assume that the Church ‘did receive’, then we’ve side-stepped the Canon Question completely.

This passive consturction was just what many of the ECF’s used to describe the role the Church played in the formation of the canon. Athanasius’ discussions on the matter come to mind.
Ken Temple January 31st, 2010 8:06 pm :
Hi Tom,
For clarification –

What does this mean?

“I refer to reliability vice subjectivity as a problem.”

vice ? I don’t understand this sentence and the way the word “vice” is used.

Sincerely,
Ken Temple
Tom Brown January 31st, 2010 11:31 pm :
Dear Ken,

After I wrote my draft for this article, one of my editors told me to take out the word “vice” because it was a lawyer word, not used in regular parlance. I reluctantly agreed, but then neglected that advice in the combox. I guess he was right!!!

By “vice” I mean “as opposed to” or “in place of.” It’s a minor point, but I was not simply critiquing the classical Reformed criterion for being subjective, but for being unreliable (specifically, for being subjective to the point of being unreliable).

Peace in Christ,
Tom
Tom Brown January 31st, 2010 11:52 pm :
Dear Andrew,

I’m having a hard time pinning down the canon criterion you believe Christians (or the Church) have (has) properly applied. You told me that “We all we have to address the issue of the role that the Church played in God’s work of writing of Scriptures and their collection in the canon.” But I am not arguing about whether we have to address the role of the Church in the process. I agree that we do have to address it. My question is how do you address it? In other words, if someone were to ask you why Christians believe book X, Y, and Z are of the set of infallible books, what would your answer be?

Based on a previous comment, I thought it was your view that a text is canonical if the Church came to accept it as canonical. But from your most recent comment, it seems that you rely primarily on the “proof” of inspiration that appears from texts doing “what God intended them to do” – that is, you rely on some internal quality of a text to attest to its own divine inspiration and thus canonicity. Is this your view, that the canon is measured primarily by its internal qualities, and secondarily by the Church’s recognition of those qualities?

Thanks for the clarification of your point that I should note where source authors were not intending to be comprehensive. I rest on my earlier statement that the authors I cited were intending comprehensively to address the matter of the canon, either by writing a sort of survey on the topic or by writing very much with intellectual opponents in mind. In my reading of Calvin on the canon, I am left with the clear impression that he has the Catholic view, critique, or challenge in mind and is attempting to meet it with his own arguments. He was a lawyer, and the way he goes about writing on the canon is definitely a lawyerly way (e.g., “But a most pernicious error widely prevails…”). He is meeting what he understands to be the Catholic position head on. This part of our discussion is probably not helpful to the reading audience. What would be helpful is if you could show where I have misrepresented or underrepresented what is the full Reformed view of the canon.

When I asked from what or whom did the Church receive the canon, you replied: “This passive [construction] was just what many of the ECF’s used to describe the role the Church played in the formation of the canon. Athanasius’ discussions on the matter come to mind.” This does not answer my question. I didn’t mean to criticize you (or Athanasius) for using the passive voice, but really, I’m curious who the actor is in these discussions about the Church having received the canon.

Peace in Christ,
Tom
Andrew McCallum February 1st, 2010 9:59 am :
Tom said:
But I am not arguing about whether we have to address the role of the Church in the process. I agree that we do have to address it. My question is how do you address it?

Tom – You have quoted a number of Reformed folks who have spoken of the internal testimony of the Spirit as evidence of the inclusion of a given book into the canon. And you seem to be treating these quotes as if the writer is presenting a comprehensve apologetic to you. So what I’m pointint first is that the role that the Church played may not be the subject under consideration in such disucssions, and second that we Protestants are not trying to avoid the role that the Church played in bringing the canon into formation.

So on the “how” question – In the 4th paragraph in Section III. you say, The Catholic or Orthodox Christian will point to the work of the Holy Spirit in the visible Church as the basis for his articulation of the canon, which work is seen in sacred tradition. 140 But because the Protestant system rejects basing the canon of Scripture on tradition or any other authority, and rejects that the Holy Spirit works infallibly through the visible Church, it must find some other basis for whatever test or criterion leads to the 66-book canon. If the basis for the Protestant articulation of a canon test is man’s reasoning, then the canon produced is no more reliable than the fallible reasoning that is at its base.

So I am disagreeing with your assessment of the Protestant mindset above. We also believe that God established the canon via the work of the Holy Spirit through the visible Church. The point of distinction between us from what I can see is where the locus of infallibility lies. Is it the Church which is given a special charism of infallibility or is it God who works infallibly through a fallible Church to produce an infallible canon? We see no reason to be ascribing infallibility to the Church to determine infallibility any more than we need to accord infallibility to the individual writers of the books. So for instance, Luke did not need to be infallible in his own person to write an infallible book if God who inspired Him is working through the process. So likewise the Church did not need to be infallible to comprehend God’s purpose in the canon if God who worked through the Church via the agency of the Holy Spirit is infallible.

Now delving further into the “how” question we get all of the analysis of the criteria that the various theologians of the Early Church used to understand whether a given book should be understood to be part of God’s Word. F.F. Bruce goes into great detail as to what characteristic that ECF’s saw in the canonical texts to assure them that these books were what God intended to be part of the canon. There is a an internal testimony to these books, that is, they show the marks of God’s hand on them rather than just the hand of man. Another way of saying this is that ECF’s did not pick the texts of Scripture at random, they picked them because they had the umistakable hand of God on them. It is these internal criteria that often get discussed by Protestant writers.

I’m curious who the actor is in these discussions about the Church having received the canon.

I’m not sure what you mean by this. The “actors” who did the receiving were the theologians of the Early Church.
Ken Temple February 1st, 2010 1:29 pm :
Hi Tom,
I only have time to deal with some of what you wrote, I am dividing it in to manageable units for me, as I have to go out of town for my work/job.

You wrote, (see below) following my reference to 1 John 2:27, that the Holy Spirit does give us discernment to know truth from error; so we can discern which books are true and which are not, but that does not discount hard study, historical research, backgrounds, language studies, sound exegesis, and spiritual maturity. Although all believers have the Holy Spirit, that is not an excuse for laziness or putting subjective “the Holy Spirit told me” over sound exegesis and context and historical background studies. And 1 Cor. 2:14-16 teaches that spiritual discernment is for the mature, and so the people of God still need godly teachers to teach them the Scriptures. (elders/pastors/teachers – Ephesians 4:11-12; I Timothy 3, Titus 1:5ff; Acts 14:23)

You wrote,
As I argued, this method of determining the canon lacks reliability, and has been refuted by historical experience.

Actually, I think that the facts below show otherwise.

If I told you that I believe the Book of Wisdom to be God-breathed (which I do), how would you refute this?

The book of Wisdom claims to have been written by Solomon, and it was written sometime in 1-2 century BC; since Solomon lived around 931 BC, this makes it is a false writing because of this pseudonym. (see reference below – it is deceptive to claim the author is Solomon “Thou has chosen me to be king, and to build the temple”, etc. This makes it not “Theopneustos”.

The Jews reported that prophesy stopped from around 430 BC (Nehemiah, Malachi and Chronicles being the last books written of the OT); and Christians believe it started back up with the ministry of John Baptist. The Gospels even use key verses from the book of Malachi for John’s ministry, as if to say “this is where prophesy left off; and we are starting it back up again” – Malachi 4:6 (Luke 1:17) and 3:1 (quoted in Mark 1:2 and Matthew 11:10, 14; Luke 1:76; 7:27)

“Although the author’s name is nowhere given in the text, the writer was traditionally believed to be King Solomon because of references such as that found in IX:7-8, “Thou hast chosen me to be a king of thy people, and a judge of thy sons and daughters: Thou hast commanded me to build a temple upon thy holy mount…” The formulation here is similar to that of Ecclesiastes I:12, “I, Koheleth, was king in Jerusalem over Israel,” which also fails to denote Solomon by name, but leaves no doubt as to whom the reader should identify as the author. The early Christian community showed some awareness that the book was not actually authored by Solomon, as the Muratorian fragment notes that the book was “written by the friends of Solomon in his honor.” The traditional attribution of The Book of Wisdom to Solomon has been soundly rejected in modern times. Says the Catholic Encyclopedia: “at the present day, it is freely admitted that Solomon is not the writer of the Book of Wisdom, which has been ascribed to him because its author, through a literary fiction, speaks as if he were the Son of David.” Although the book of Wisdom is also called the Wisdom of Solomon, it was most likely composed centuries after the death of King Solomon.”
Scholars believe that the book represents the most classical Greek language found in the Septuagint, having been written during the Jewish Hellenistic period (the 1st or 2nd century BC). The author of the text appears well versed in the popular philosophical, religious, and ethical writings adopted by Hellenistic Alexandria.” (Wikipedia entry on the Wisdom of Solomon) I don’t have time for deeper research into the book; and someone would need to show evidence that refutes what this article is saying.
It may have devotional value and some general truth; but it does not seem to be “God-breathed”. I have not studied it in depth; I just looked at it again on line to get a feel for it.

Is the Holy Spirit leading me to its truth, or merely permitting me to believe it to be true?

If it is not “God –breathed” or canonical; then the Holy Spirit is not leading you to think it is truth. God is sovereign and permits lots of things to happen that are not His moral/prescriptive will.

I am just asking the question, no offense is intended:
Did you come to believe that the “Wisdom of Solomon” was inspired before you submitted to the Bishop of Rome as infallible, or afterward?

If afterward, please don’t be offended, I am only asking questions; then you are probably following the supposed infallible judgment of Trent (and Vatican I) on this; in spite of the historical evidence. Is this true?
JJS February 2nd, 2010 4:02 pm :
Andrew/Ken,

You both bring up interesting points (and I am glad you two have the tanacity to stick with these dialogues — I usually fade out after a few days).

Andrew, my guess is that Tom will respond to your question, “Did Luke need to be infallible in his person in order to write an infallible gospel?” by saying something like, “No, he didn’t, and neither are we claiming the the bishops of the CC are infallible in their persons. In fact, we are saying the exact same thing about their infallibility as we are saying about Luke’s, namely, that it is only exercised under certain conditions (such as when each is acting in his official capacity).” That said, though, I think your overall point stands: God doesn’t need the human agent to be infallible in order for him to bring about his will infallibly. If he did, then wouldn’t every act of God’s providence require an infallible creature to bring it to pass? Was that sparrow that fell to the ground infallible?

Ken: You’re pinpointing the exact concerns I and others have with Rome, namely, that they tend to dismiss objections by invoking a kind of Catholic VanTilianism. So if you say that the word dikaioo doesn’t mean what they say it means, but it means something like acquittal, they will say, “Well, we don’t go to pagan Jewish or liberal German lexicographers to determine what the words in OUR Book mean. We are the ones with the authority to determine what dikaioo means.” Same with many of the historical objections to Rome’s claims like, say, that popes after Honorius routinely declared him to be a heretic. I guess what I’m saying is that for all Rome’s claims about the benefits of being able to pinpoint via an appeal to history the bishops who still hold apostolic authority, they sometimes seem to dismiss the same kinds of historical inquiry when it fails to yield the conclusions they agree with.
Tom Brown February 2nd, 2010 6:46 pm :
Dear Andrew,

In the portion of my writing that you quoted, I was not speaking of a “Protestant mindset.” I was speaking instead of Protestant doctrine. If you believe that I have misstated or misinterpreted that doctrine, please let me know. I reached these conclusions in my article:

(1) The Protestant system rejects that the Holy Spirit works infallibly through the visible Church.
(2) The Protestant system cannot base the canon of Scripture on tradition or any other authority, because doing so would place such authority above Scripture.
(3) We can only have as much confidence in the Protestant canon as we have in the process by which it was delivered to us.

You said in reply that the canon comes through the Holy Spirit acting through the visible Church. The distinction you gave, as I understood it, was that God works infallibly through a fallible Church in giving us our canon. But as I said of R. C. Sproul’s position, we can have no more assurance in the canon than we have in the process by which it was delivered to us. I agree that God can deliver a work through the fallible Church that is free from error. But what is your assurance that this particular teaching was transmitted without error through the fallible Church? If we deny that the Holy Spirit preserved the Church from error when teaching us about the faith, it is ad hoc to claim that the Church was preserved from error in delivering the canon.

I think your answer might be that we have “all of the analysis of the criteria that the various theologians of the Early Church used.” But their analysis is highly debatable, as you can see from my discussion with Ken about how to handle Jerome, or what conclusions to draw from Jerome’s works. F. F. Bruce does not solve this problem, and instead ultimately relies upon other criteria to settle disputes left in place after a survey of the early Church Fathers’ works. (I discussed Bruce’s treatment extensively; please let me know if you think I got him wrong). If you rely instead (or additionally) on the internal testimony of the canonical books, how do you respond to my comments about the inherent unreliability of this method (see, e.g., the text accompanying footnote 18 and the two paragraphs above that)?

You said, “Another way of saying this is that ECF’s did not pick the texts of Scripture at random, they picked them because they had the u[n]mistakable hand of God on them.” If that is so, why is it that not one single early Church Father articulated a canon that matched the Protestant Old Testament? Does that not disprove your theory that the canonical books, unlike the non-canonical, bear testimony of the “unmistakable hand of God”?

Peace in Christ,
Tom
K. Doran February 2nd, 2010 6:50 pm :
JJS,

Plenty of Catholics accept that Honorius taught heretical doctrines. We just see absolutely no convincing evidence that he attempted to teach them infallibly. See Dom John Chapman’s work, the Condemnation of Pope Honorius:

http://www.archive.org/stream/a620530200chapuoft#page/n5/mode/2up

Sincerely,

K. Doran
Tim A. Troutman February 2nd, 2010 6:51 pm :
Jason,

I haven’t been following the dialogue closely between Andrew, Ken, and Tom, so maybe I’m missing something or re-stating something that has already been said, but the analogy you reference is insufficient. The problem isn’t whether or not God can effect an infallible process or inerrant result through (ordinarily) fallible means. I’m sure Tom never claimed that so I think you are beating up a straw man.

The problem is inconsistency and a lack of several key principled distinctions. Protestantism says that we trust God to use the Church to recognize the canon, on which we will base our faith, but we will not trust anything else the Church says if we consider her, according to our private judgement, to contradict anything contained in that canon (which she told us about). The Catholic faith, in contradistinction, trusts both the Church, qua Church, and the canon. This is internally consistent.
Tom Brown February 2nd, 2010 7:16 pm :
Dear Ken,

I think that the Spirit-leads-believers-to-truth method of determining the true canon is unreliable and has been refuted by historical experience. I do not see how adding a layer about the Christian’s duty to study carefully solves this problem.

You have found studies and apologetics on the canon, and know a good deal about the canon, but this does not change the fact that not one single early Church Father articulated a canon matching the Protestant 39-book Old Testament. That would leave someone taking your view in the position of choosing sides between you (a devout Christian studied in matter of canonics) and the early Church Fathers (presumably devout Christians, also studied in this matter, and much closer in time to the historical data upon which you rely).

Also, if you are settling the debate by analysis of historical data, a critical problem arises. You have thereby placed analysis of historical data above the canon, and thus violated sola scriptura. I argued this at length in this article. Please let me know if you’re not sure what I’m getting at, or let me know why you think I am incorrect.

Our example of the Book of Wisdom plays this thought process out. One could go with the presentation of historical evidence you gave, or one could accept the majority view of the early Church. But either way, from the Protestant point of view, one going through this process has placed historical analysis above the canon in order to determine the extent of the canon. This is Ridderbos’s view that I gave in the text accompanying footnote 26. I believe his is a conservative and traditional Reformed view.

You talked about the history of the Book of Wisdom, and argued that it can’t be God-breathed because it is pseudonymous. Even if we were to agree here that the Catholic Church is left with trouble on its hands in defending its canonical books, this does not in any way free the Protestant system from the critiques I have articulated in this article and combox. I have to keep returning to this point, Ken: your paragraphs of historical facts and quotes do not address the argument I have made in my article. I think we can believe in Rome’s claims for ecclesiological and philosophical reasons as well as for historical reasons. But this is not the place for that historical debate.

Peace in Christ,
Tom
Andrew Preslar February 2nd, 2010 7:38 pm :
Jason,

I think that this is your go-to move. I will try to stay in my Nikes. I am particularly intrigued that you invoke the criterion of scientific hermeneutics vis-a-vis the Church’s doctrine of justification. As the development of that science now stands, the classical Reformed construal of justification is the exegetical equivalent of Confederate banknotes. For example, one of the most respected exegetes in the field of NT studies has been cited to the effect that:

Dunn (“The Justice of God,” 17) notes that appreciation for the OT and Jewish context of Paul’s thought “would have short-circuited the old Reformation disputes: … Is ‘the righteousness of God’ subjective genitive or objective genitive? … And does the equivalent verb ‘to justify,’ mean ‘to make righteous’ or ‘to count righteous’? … Once we recognize that righteousness and justification are the language of relationship it becomes evident that both disputes push unjustifiably for an either-or answer.” (Cited by Scott Hahn, Kinship by Covenant, 467.)

The Catholic Church can definitely live with a both-and on this count (e.g., we never denied the legal dimension of justification).

In connection with your claims about the Catholic Church’s appropriation of biblical scholarship, I have several times indicated what it is about the Church that renders her better equipped to discern the meaning of Sacred Scripture than any individual commentator or school of commentary. Yet you continue to put this kind of argument forward as though the Catholic appeal to principles of understanding the Word of God, over and above scientific commentary, were simply ad hoc. This is misleading. It is true that any Protestant appeal to knowledge of the Word of God over and above scientific exegesis would be ad hoc (e.g., confessionalism), given Protestant ecclesiology. But the Catholic Church is not Protestant. It is precisely the Catholic Church’s self-understanding and her teaching concerning the nature of the Church (which she understands herself to be) that renders her exposition of the truth of Scripture (over and above, and when necessary contrary to, the opinions of scholars ) non-question begging. Allow me to recapitulate: The Church, as a whole, is the Body of Christ, having the mind of Christ, and therefore knows the things of Christ in a pre-eminent way. The Church’s apprehension of the Word is not reducible to human opinion, arrived at by means of critical historiography and critical exegesis of ancient texts, although it uses human opinions, and is conversant with them (e.g. the opinions of the best contemporary NT scholarship).

Your first paragraph confuses general providence with the specific will of God. Obviously, there is a sense in which God infallibly willed both the Council of Trent and the canon of Sacred Scripture. The question is whether and how we can know that the results were according to his specific will.

Honorius? Well within the pale of Catholic dogma concerning infallibility (what he actually wrote about the monothelite controversy is not strong stuff, but it is not heretical, in fact it seems that he fundamentally misunderstood the issues, and was addressing a different question than the one posed), and the subsequent denunciations of Honorious by various Councils is likewise within the pale (if they indeed unequivocally classified Honorius with the heretics). Happy hunting.
Tom Brown February 2nd, 2010 7:41 pm :
Dear Jason,

I hear you about staying with drawn-out and nuanced discussion. I hope we can both get our tenacity on! The nuances can be infinitely consequential, notwithstanding their being nuances.

Similar to what I just said to Andrew, I agree with you that “God doesn’t need the human agent to be infallible in order for him to bring about his will infallibly.” My contention is not that God cannot deliver untainted truth through fallible actors. My argument is that we have no assurance reliable enough to bind our consciences that the Protestant canon is true. (I also argue that it is ad hoc, but I won’t repeat that here.)

I’m not perfectly clear about your dismissal of the Catholic “VanTilian” view of authority and history. She believes what she believes, and is ready to stand or fall by her claims of truth. Would you have her rub her hands together when delivering a teaching and admit something like, “gee, we could be wrong about this?” I doubt that Protestants are any more open to historical evidence offered up against its own canon, e.g., historical evidence supporting the exclusion of Esther or Revelation from the canon.

The Catholic Church does not insist, as some other religions do, that an opponent shut his mouth when raising an historical objection. I have a relative who was excommunicated from a particular Reformed denomination for questioning its teaching, but this heavy-handedness is not the Catholic way (and thankfully, this is very, very rarely the Protestant way). Instead the Catholic Church argues about and interacts with historical data. And these debates are out there for all to read, not hidden away. The Catholic Church highly espouses the principle of freedom of conscience, and would not bind any person’s conscience who could not accept her own view of history based on that person’s view of history. She instead works with such a person and prays with them and hopes they can come to agreement on whatever the dispute is. This has been my experience, and in large part explains why it has taken me six years to come around to entering the Catholic Church.

Peace in Christ,
Tom
Ken Temple February 2nd, 2010 9:01 pm :
Hi Tom,
Thanks for the good discussion!

You wrote:
Also, if you are settling the debate by analysis of historical data, a critical problem arises. You have thereby placed analysis of historical data above the canon, and thus violated sola scriptura. I argued this at length in this article. Please let me know if you’re not sure what I’m getting at, or let me know why you think I am incorrect.

I understand your point; do you see my point? Sola Scriptura never required all historical facts and background of books to be in the text; so if a historical fact is true in real space and time, then that truth/fact is not over or above Scripture, it is merely knowable apart from the text itself. So, it does not violate Sola Scriptura. For example, that Mark wrote Peter is not explicity written out in the text of Mark. This is no problem for Sola Scriptura, because Sola Scriptura never required all historical background knowledge to be in the text. When Luther said at his trial at the Diet of Worms, “Unless I am convinced by Holy Scripture or evident reason, I will not recant, because Popes and councils have erred and contradicted one another” (my paraphrase from memory)

He was pretty much assuming the same canon as Protestants. (with doubts about James as strawry as compared with Galatians and Romans; and doubts about Revelation and Esther, etc.)

Sola Scriptura only says that Scripture is the only infallible source or authority for faith and practice; not that it is the only source of all knowledge. Studying the background of a book, etc. does not put those facts and evidences above Scripture, it merely confirms. If it is real history, it is true. So those facts about the historical background of different books, while not in the text, if true and historical are still true. Truth is truth; in Scripture, nature, history, space, mathematics, etc. There is a lot of truth that is not spelled out in Scripture.

Sola Scriptura was that Scripture rules over Popes and councils decisions and interpretations and all the interpretations of doctors and early church father must be subjected again to the light of God’s holy word, the Scriptures.

I will try to interact with more of what you wrote later.
Tom Brown February 2nd, 2010 9:59 pm :
Dear Ken,

I argued in the paper that for Protestantism to be consistent, it has to see any extra-Biblical evidence that is needed to define the canon as being above the canon, and thus as violating sola scriptura. This is because Protestantism faults Catholicism as placing herself over the canon by exercising a power to define the canon. If you exercise your judgment in a way that defines the canon, you are placing your judgment “over” the canon in the same way you would say the Catholic Church places herself “over” the canon.

You said: “Sola Scriptura never required all historical facts and background of books to be in the text.” I’m not trying to claim that it ever did. I’m saying that to be consistent, an advocate of sola scriptura cannot tolerate defining the canon with evidence that is extra-Biblical, because by its own terms this would place that evidence above the canon. Ridderbos has this spot on.

You said: “if a historical fact is true in real space and time, then that truth/fact is not over or above Scripture, it is merely knowable apart from the text itself. So, it does not violate Sola Scriptura.” But Ken, the real question is how do we know what is true, or perhaps how certain can we be of truth. History does not tell us what is in the canon. The canon of infallible writ is a theological construct. You cannot know that Esther is canonical in the same way you can know that General Lee fought at Gettysburg. You can know that the Book of Esther has a certain history, but this does not lead you to the theological conclusion that it is of God. You have to apply (1) human reason to (2) your criterion of canonicity to reach that conclusion!

You said: “Sola Scriptura only says that Scripture is the only infallible source or authority for faith and practice; not that it is the only source of all knowledge.” Ken, I know this – I defined the doctrine this way repeatedly in my article (!). I am not arguing that you violate sola scriptura simply on account of Scripture being the “only source of knowledge.” I’m arguing that you violate the terms of sola scriptura by what you do to reach a canon in spite of Scripture not giving you a canon (explicitly)—when you apply human reason to your criterion of canonicity. Please reconsider the paragraphs around footnote 26, and this, from section III. Tell me, which premise or conclusion do you disagree with here?:

The doctrine of sola scriptura maintains that the Bible is to be the Christian’s sole infallible authority. The sine qua non (‘that without which’) of the Reformation is that no Church or other human judgment can be placed over Scripture. Power over the canon is power over Scripture itself because it is the power to eradicate a necessary part of the canon or to add a spurious part to Scripture. So the Reformed position is not any more compatible with the Church or other human judgment being placed over the canon than it is compatible with their placement over Scripture itself.

But the very act of answering the Canon Question inherently involves an extra-Biblical fallible human judgment, unless one is preserved from error by the Holy Spirit. This fallible human judgment, by defining the criterion of canon, exercises power over the canon itself. And as I just noted, power over the canon is power over Scripture. Therefore, absent the Holy Spirit’s preserving one from error, to answer the Canon Question is to exercise power over Scripture, and to place one’s judgment over Scripture. So to answer the Canon Question is to violate the doctrine of sola scriptura by placing something over the Christian’s sole infallible authority. If Protestants see the Catholic Church as placing herself ‘over’ Scripture simply by articulating the canon of Scripture, so too they should see answers to the Canon Question culled from human reason or extra-Biblical evidence as being ‘over’ Scripture. Since Protestants see the former as violating sola scriptura, there is no principled reason not to see the latter as a violation of sola scriptura.

Peace in Christ,
Tom
K. Doran February 3rd, 2010 10:05 am :
Ken,

To second what Tom is saying, he is _not_ arguing that Protestantism is inconsistent because it affirms knowledge from sources outside of scripture. He is arguing that Protestantism is inconsistent because it simultaneously faults Catholics for using extra scriptural sources (the authority of popes and councils) to define the canon, while Protestants themselves use extra-scriptural sources (history, scholarship) to define the canon. Both Protestants and Catholics use extra-scriptural sources to define the canon. If your definition of sola scriptura allows for the Protestant use of extra-scriptural sources to define the canon, then you must let Catholics use extra scriptural sources to define the canon. But if you will not let Catholics use extra-scriptural sources to define the canon, then you cannot let yourself use extra-scriptural sources to define the canon.

So we leave you with the question: will you let Catholics use extra scriptural sources to define the very canon itself? If you will not, then why do you let your compatriots use extra scriptural sources to define the canon? If you will, then why won’t you let us use extra scriptural sources for anything other than defining the canon?

Sincerely,

K. Doran
Tom Riello February 3rd, 2010 10:32 am :
K. Doran,

Very well put! I remember one scholar (I do not recall who, why do I forget such things!!!) saying, “The Protestant Reformation did not do away with authority, it just shifted authority from the Church to the Academy.”

I think that is a fair assessment, even though that was not the intention of the Reformers. The rejection of the Church’s authority created a vacuum and that vacuum was filled by the academy to come in and reconstruct and deconstruct Jesus, Paul, the early Church etc… and all to the whims of the guild that held sway at the time (how many quests for the historical Jesus are we up to now?).
Philologus February 3rd, 2010 12:10 pm :
Tom,

I agree wholeheartedly, and find it quite ironic watching Protestant apologists of the 20th century and our own times struggling against scripture’s and greater Nicene Christianity’s detractors, many of whom are themselves Protestants utilizing a methodology that is the logical result of Reformation principles and which the Protestants themselves, perhaps even more ironically, use to rebut the unique historical, biblical and systematic-theological claims of the Roman Catholic Church.
K. Doran February 3rd, 2010 2:34 pm :
Hey Tom,

Thanks, and I hear ya. When I was a doubtful of the Church’s authority I always looked to other sources to replace it. The ideal non-magisterial sources are deep scholars who lead exemplary moral lives, and (if one believes in miracles) have experienced or mediated miracles of one sort or another. But too many of these ideal sources turned out to be Catholic saints who recognized Church authority themselves; so I couldn’t ignore Church authority any longer. Our separated brethren are right to look for some authorities in their lives, including authorities that can help them identify the all-important canon of scripture. Let’s pray that they will get to know the Catholic saints, and by these lesser authorities be lead to the greater authority of the magisterium itself. . . and by that greater light be lead more fully into the mystery of the one great light, our Lord.

Sincerely,

K. Doran
Ken Temple February 3rd, 2010 9:05 pm :
Ken,
To second what Tom is saying, he is _not_ arguing that Protestantism is inconsistent because it affirms knowledge from sources outside of scripture.

K. Doran, Actually, yes he is. Seems like it to me; right Tom?

He is arguing that Protestantism is inconsistent because it simultaneously faults Catholics for using extra scriptural sources (the authority of popes and councils) to define the canon, while Protestants themselves use extra-scriptural sources (history, scholarship) to define the canon.

Except the claim of the RCC is not just “using extra-biblical sources”, but it is claiming that these are infallible extra-biblical sources; and they give extra assurance, infallible certainty and knowledge and assurance. See how hard it is to discuss the issue without also bringing in the RCC claim of infallibility? I say we can find fault with the RCC because it has make mistakes, added false doctrines, and also claimed an authority to itself, late in history (1870) and then reads back into all history that claim and explains it under the canopy of “development of doctrine” ( Newman, etc.)

Both Protestants and Catholics use extra-scriptural sources to define the canon. If your definition of sola scriptura allows for the Protestant use of extra-scriptural sources to define the canon, then you must let Catholics use extra scriptural sources to define the canon.

You and your church can (and already has done – they have already defined these things as dogmas for themselves; and also make the claim over all human creatures – Boniface VIII’s Unam Sanctum) do whatever you want; but not without criticism; I guess that is what you mean.

But if you will not let Catholics use extra-scriptural sources to define the canon, then you cannot let yourself use extra-scriptural sources to define the canon.

I disagree. It is not an equal analogy. We are fine with the early church history as history if nothing credible contradicts the facts. But yours is a claim to infallibility; and it is was a big claim, claiming infallibility is almost like claiming to be God. (Only God and His Word is infallible)

So we leave you with the question: will you let Catholics use extra scriptural sources to define the very canon itself? If you will not, then why do you let your compatriots use extra scriptural sources to define the canon? If you will, then why won’t you let us use extra scriptural sources for anything other than defining the canon?

Again, we don’t stop you from making it your case; you mean, I think, that we make an unfair argument. But, again, you left out that word infallible; a big claim; and so, your claim is much bigger than just wanting to be free from criticism for using extra-Biblical sources. Because it is more than that; your Church is actually claiming infallibility on the canon, and you are saying if that is true and if the early got it right on the NT, why no be unified and submit to all the other stuff? I.e. – that the Pope is the Vicar of Christ on earth and we have to repent of our rebellion and submit to the Pope in order to be saved. (Boniface VIII, Unam Sanctum) I know Vatican 2 softened all that, (but it is a clear contradiction to the history of the anathemas and the tradition of “no salvation outside the church”, ) but that is the clear implication of all the RCC apologetics. And in order to be saved in RCC theology, one must believe all the dogmas, transubstantiation, Mary’s PV, IC, and BA, etc. To believe in any of those things, and other things like indulgences and treasury of merit, purgatory, and praying to Mary and relics and NT priests, etc. to us, is like going against Scripture, reason, and truth.

Tom Reillo wrote:
I think that is a fair assessment, even though that was not the intention of the Reformers. The rejection of the Church’s authority created a vacuum and that vacuum was filled by the academy to come in and reconstruct and deconstruct Jesus, Paul, the early Church etc… and all to the whims of the guild that held sway at the time (how many quests for the historical Jesus are we up to now?).

I cannot understand this kind of argument – that kind of academic approach comes from no faith at all in God or the miraculous in Scripture and so, that is not even Christianity at all.
Tom Brown February 3rd, 2010 10:46 pm :
Dear Ken,

No, I am not arguing that Protestantism is inconsistent for affirming knowledge from sources outside of Scripture. Please read my previous comment to you, in which I explained this at length.

Regarding your concerns over infallibility, the Reformers did not reject the Catholic Church because the Church claimed infallibility. The Reformers rejected the Catholic Church because they saw her as placing herself “over” Scripture. If you reject Catholicism because she makes claims of infallibility, you are having your own private Reformation, not the Reformation that Luther, Calvin, Zwingli and their fellows had. Catholicism binds consciences with respect to the canon. Protestantism does this too whether or not it claims the canon is infallible.

You said: “I say we can find fault with the RCC because it has make [sic] mistakes, added false doctrines, and also claimed an authority to itself, late in history (1870) and then reads back into all history that claim and explains it under the canopy of ‘development of doctrine’ ( Newman, etc.)” Ken, comments like this one are irrelevant to the point in discussion here, specifically my arguments about the doctrine of sola scriptura. Please refrain from this type of rhetoric, because I cannot rebut it here without steering the entire course of the discussion badly off course.

Ken, what do you think of my point that history does not record the canon the way it records that General Lee was at Gettysburg? You appear still to be speaking of history as if it yields the canon. You then said: “claiming infallibility is almost like claiming to be God. (Only God and His Word is [sic] infallible).” Random House defines “infallible” this way: “absolutely trustworthy or sure.” If I tell you it is an infallible truth that the sun will rise tomorrow, I have said something absolutely trustworthy or sure. I have not thereby almost claimed to be God. Again, you are claiming a basis for rejecting Catholicism that differs from the Reformers’ basis for rejecting Catholicism.

I still hope to hear your interaction with my previous comment, which is a partial repeat of the parts of my overall argument that applies to the position I think you are taking.

Peace in Christ,
Tom
K. Doran February 4th, 2010 10:19 am :
Dear Ken,

Many reformers do not believe that the Church’s definition of the canon should be used to provide certainty about the canon. They fear this would place the Church “over” scripture (we Catholics disagree, of course). But the same logic would declare that the use of historical analysis and the scholarship of professors to provide _certainty_ would place these authorities “over” scripture. If you are willing to concede that your use of historical analysis and the scholarship of professors leaves you with an uncertain, fallible table of contents, then we can move to a different stage of the argument. But if you believe that your scholarship has given you a completely certain, infallible table of contents, then we are left with the point that I made in #80, in summary of Tom’s argument.

Do you believe that your scholarship has given you complete certainty about the table of contents of scripture? Compete certainty about every book that should be included and every word (even the ones that vary across early manuscripts) that belongs in every book? If yes, then By The Reformed Definition Of “Over” Scripture, you have made your scholarship “over” scripture as well. If you don’t believe that you have such complete certainty, then we are in the “fallible canon of infallible books” part of the argument, which I recommend you then read in Tom’s post above.

I won’t have time to interact more, but I wish you the best in your search for truth!

Sincerely,

K. Doran
Tom Riello February 4th, 2010 10:35 am :
Ken,

I am not sure what you cannot understand about what I wrote. I do not think it is a coincidence that the historical/critical approach, redactionary criticism, historical quest for Jesus etc… all began in the Protestant University especially in Europe. Better minds than mine have suggested that the Enlightenment also has its roots in the Protestant Reformation (again, in no way am I saying that Luther or Calvin intended this or thought this was going to happen, but the law of unintended consequences holds place). I think Bart Erhman is a good example of what happens when one does not have the support of the Church to define the faith. He was Moody trained and a self-described fundamentalist. He then went off to Princeton where he learned things contrary to his Moody training. Instead of having the foundation of the Church to support him, he, by his own admission, came to the place where he does not accept the claims of Christ, nor does he accept the canon established by the Church.
Ken Temple February 4th, 2010 2:53 pm :
Tom wrote:
No, I am not arguing that Protestantism is inconsistent for affirming knowledge from sources outside of Scripture. Please read my previous comment to you, in which I explained this at length.

Thanks Tom ( and K. Doran and Tom R.)

I was just trying to keep it simple; I am not as smart in my words or formulation of arguments or logic as you guys are; you seem to have said that Protestantism violates the principle of Sola Scriptura because it relies on extra-biblical sources to even know what Scripture is; and that is inconsistent, in your view, with the principle of Sola Scriptura, right?

Regarding your concerns over infallibility, the Reformers did not reject the Catholic Church because the Church claimed infallibility.

They did, later, as a result of their rejection of what you write in your next sentence. You are right, but they rejected the infallibility claim as a result of your next sentence, which I think is true.

The Reformers rejected the Catholic Church because they saw her as placing herself “over” Scripture.

Yes, you are right on this, but wasn’t it both? They rejected the RCC as the final authority to interpret Scripture, since in the minds of the Reformers; they had added things and made wrong interpretations. (issues relating to justification, indulgences, penance, and then other things were questioned also, like purgatory and the treasury of merit and relics, etc.) Questioning the RCC’s interpretations on the issues of indulgences and justification caused questioning the authority of the church, which later led to asking questions about the canon. Don’t you think?

If you reject Catholicism because she makes claims of infallibility, you are having your own private Reformation, not the Reformation that Luther, Calvin, Zwingli and their fellows had. Catholicism binds consciences with respect to the canon. Protestantism does this too whether or not it claims the canon is infallible.

Not trying to have my own private Reformation at all. The Reformation started over penance and indulgences, and the RCC defended herself and it grew from there; eventually resulting in questioning the infallibility of the church and pope, which was not formal dogma yet, but was growing and defended when questioned. Right? Justification issues of interpretation led to the authority and Sola Scriptura issue.

You said: “I say we can find fault with the RCC because it has make [sic] mistakes, added false doctrines, and also claimed an authority to itself, late in history (1870) and then reads back into all history that claim and explains it under the canopy of ‘development of doctrine’ ( Newman, etc.)”
Ken, comments like this one are irrelevant to the point in discussion here, specifically my arguments about the doctrine of sola scriptura. Please refrain from this type of rhetoric, because I cannot rebut it here without steering the entire course of the discussion badly off course.

Ok, sorry, I am not trying to be harsh or spew “rhetoric”; but it does seem like where all this leads and that is the ultimate goal of RC apologetics, that is, creating doubt about the canon under Protestant Sola Scriptura thinking, which leads to the result that this argument would convince the Protestant/Evangelical to have to accept the 1870 dogma under the development theory and then cross the Tiber to conversion to the RCC. Newman said something like “there is no middle ground”, one either has to convert to Rome or become an atheist/agnostic/loose his faith. (something like that) Does anyone know where that is? I read somewhere at the Newman reader web site, but cannot find it again.

But you are correct that defending that would require lots of time and space.

Ken, what do you think of my point that history does not record the canon the way it records that General Lee was at Gettysburg? You appear still to be speaking of history as if it yields the canon.

If something really happens in history, then it is truth and reality, (that it happened), right?

I just don’t see any credible reason to doubt whether Mark wrote the Gospel of Mark under Peter’s apostolic authority or that Peter really wrote 2 Peter in real time and space history before he was executed in 67 AD under Nero; or that Peter wrote 1 Peter and had Silvanus clean up his grammar and/or Peter spoke it to him and Silvanus was his amanuensis. ( I Peter 5:12) or that Hebrews is “God-breathed”, whether written by Barnabas, Luke, Silas, or Apollos.

I guess, the key is “in the same way” – I don’t know much about Gettysburg, except that is was the largest battle of the Civil War and took place in a field in Pennsylvania and it was the bloodies of all the battles.

Do you mean that Gettysburg had lots of eyewitness testimony and many people writing it down as it happened, whereas the canon is testified by people years after the fact. Papias (died around 140) is testifying that Mark wrote Gospel of Mark for/under Peter; so that is almost 80 years later. And the record of that is from Irenaeus ( AD. 200); and then Eusebius (325 ) – I am guessing you are saying the way the historical records have come to us are different and not as reliable for the canon issues as for Gettysburg. Is that right?

You then said: “claiming infallibility is almost like claiming to be God. (Only God and His Word is [sic] infallible).” Random House defines “infallible” this way: “absolutely trustworthy or sure.”

I thought it was, “incapable of error”, “incapable of making a mistake”. To be fallible means we make mistakes, as shown by my bad grammar and typing errors by your [sic] additions. So, to be infallible is incapable of making a mistake.

If I tell you it is an infallible truth that the sun will rise tomorrow, I have said something absolutely trustworthy or sure. I have not thereby almost claimed to be God.

True; why the need for using the word “infallible” with respect to our subjective knowledge? This much doubting and skepticism leads to madness of the brain and obsession.

This is the point that C. Michael Patton makes in his article on the canon at Parchment and Pen:
http://www.reclaimingthemind.org/blog/2010/01/why-i-believe-the-canon-is-fallible-and-am-fine-with-it/#more-3727

“For example, I believe that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. I prepare each day with this belief in mind. Each night, I set my alarm clock and review my appointments for the following day, having a certain expectation that the next day will truly come. While I have certainty about the sun rising the next day, I don’t have infallible certainty that it will. There could be some astronomical anomaly that causes the earth to stop its rotation. There could be an asteroid that comes and destroys the earth. Christ could come in the middle of the night. In short, I don’t have absolute infallible certainty about the coming of the next day. This, however, does not give me an excuse before men or God for not believing that it will come. What if I missed an early appointment the next day and told the person “I am sorry, I did not set my alarm clock because I did not have infallible certainty that this day would come.” Would that be a valid excuse? It would neither be a valid excuse to the person who I was supposed to meet or to God.”

Later, he talks about the character played by Bill Murray in the movie, “What about Bob?” – and shows how destructive too much doubting and skepticism brings. “how do you know for sure?” is what I hear all the time from RC apologists and my personal friend, Rod Bennett, author of Four Witnessess: The Early Church in Her Own Words (Ignatius, 2002). (he was one my groomsmen in my wedding in 1988; and became RC in 1996.

Again, you are claiming a basis for rejecting Catholicism that differs from the Reformers’ basis for rejecting Catholicism.

I answered that above; I agree with you on the initial reasons for the Reformation, and I agree with the Reformers; but I think that the second (rejecting infallibility) results from the rejection of the first (putting the church over the canon, and interpretations). And since the second results from the first, then they go together, right? And then the other issues are part of that whole cluster of issues; ie. Justification, Indulgences, purgatory, treasury of merit, prayers to saints and Mary, etc.
Ken Temple February 4th, 2010 3:54 pm :
Tom, is this what you are talking about in your previous comment?

But Ken, the real question is how do we know what is true, or perhaps how certain can we be of truth. History does not tell us what is in the canon. The canon of infallible writ is a theological construct. You cannot know that Esther is canonical in the same way you can know that General Lee fought at Gettysburg. You can know that the Book of Esther has a certain history, but this does not lead you to the theological conclusion that it is of God. You have to apply (1) human reason to (2) your criterion of canonicity to reach that conclusion!

I understand what you are getting at; ie, “how do we know what we know” – epistemology. Yes, we have to ultimately use human reason to make our decisions. But if the human reason is not helped by the Holy Spirit’s work of regeneration, and then the process of renewing the mind, then that human reason is faulty. But our faith and decisions, if caused by God, are not bad in themselves. Remember John 10:27 and I John 2:27 – “Me sheep hear My voice” and “you have no one to teach you (infallibly), because you have the anointing of the Holy Spirit and He gives you discernment to know the truth.” (my paraphrase)

I don’t think it places my reason or human power over the canon; it is merely the means/agency by which we connect to intellectual truths. You used your human reason to decide that the RCC was the true church and converted; fine; that is relying on your reasoning powers also. You will likely say, “that is the Tu Quogue “you too” argument, so we won’t allow it. I don’t understand why it cannot be allowed as relevant. It is not ad homeminem, just the fact that we all use our minds to exercise faith and make decisions. We all ultimately make our decisions by human reasoning and thinking. Having faith includes thinking.
Even Romans 14:5 speaks of this, “Each person must be fully convinced in his own mind.”
Tom Brown February 4th, 2010 7:32 pm :
Dear Ken,

We are going in circles a little bit. Please tell me with which premise or conclusion from my block quote in #79 you disagree. In answer to your question about what I am saying, I am saying this:

I argued in the paper that for Protestantism to be consistent, it has to see any extra-Biblical evidence that is needed to define the canon as being above the canon, and thus as violating sola scriptura.

We agree that the Reformers rejected the Catholic Church because they saw her as placing herself “over” Scripture. A lot of things happened as a result of this, certainly including the Reformers’ rejection of the Catholic claim to the charism of infallibility. But my point in that block quote in #79, is about the need for consistent rejection of things that are “over” Scripture. Until you address that part of my argument, I think talk of infallibility is a distraction.

Ken, please note that I did not accuse you of spewing rhetoric. “Rhetoric” doesn’t have to be a pejorative term, and I didn’t mean it that way. I meant it this way: “the use of language.”

You said about my Gettysburg example and people’s handling of history: “If something really happens in history, then it is truth and reality, (that it happened), right?”

This is key: the proper scope of the canon is not something that happened in history. You gave examples, like that Mark wrote the Gospel of Mark. That is something that happened. But you cannot get from [Mark wrote the Gospel of Mark] to [the Gospel of Mark is canonical] without an intermediate step. This step is not epistemology either (that’s another distracting point). The intermediate step is your having to apply (1) human reason and (2) your criterion of canonicity. If we found another letter by Mark, would you say that got wrongfully left out of the Bible? Why is Mark’s authorship a proof of canonicity? If we found out that someone other than Mark wrote that Gospel, would you exclude it?

You said about recognizing the leadings of the Holy Spirit to determine the canon: “I don’t think it places my reason or human power over the canon; it is merely the means/agency by which we connect to intellectual truths.” Here, I think, is the inconsistency in rejecting the Catholic Church’s being “over” Scripture while simultaneously placing yourself “over” Scripture. If you are not “over” Scripture by studying the texts and their history, and by listening to the leadings of the Holy Spirit, of what is the Catholic Church guilty in determining the canon? She can equally claim that she has been a “means/agency by which we connect to intellectual truths.” You have simply replaced the Church’s judgment for your own. Note that I am not opposed to the use of human reason (as I used human reason in deciding to become Catholic, like you said). I am arguing that you can’t have it both ways, rejecting the Catholic Church for using human reason in determining the canon while permitting yourself to use the same. I have a reason to trust the Church over myself or any individual, because she was given certain promises and graces by Christ and the Holy Spirit.

Peace in Christ,
Tom
T. Needham February 9th, 2010 4:03 am :
You mention circularity of the argument in the “preaching Christ” section. I think circularity can also be applied to self-authentication and to historical issues.

Regarding self-authentication, if Scripture is the sole reliable source of infallible Truth on which Christianity is based (sola scriptura), then how can the authenticity of the content of scripture be measured if not by the standard of the Truth which it reveals? That is to say, Scripture is the source of the Truth which is the (objective) standard by which the authenticity of its content is measured.

Another problem with self-authentication: without a definitive inspired table of contents, if we (only) know the canon of Scripture through self-authentication, then not only do the books currently recognised as Scripture need to be assessed to be certain they are authentic, so also every other book in existence needs to be assessed to be sure they are not scripture.

Regarding recourse to historical sources, Protestants consider legitimate those historical sources with which they agree; they then go on to use these sources to legitimise their position. (Circularity.)

“.. because the Holy Spirit testifies in our hearts that they are from God.”
“Those that the Holy Spirit has inwardly taught truly rest upon Scripture, … ”
The problem with relying on the guidance of the Holy Spirit on this matter is that it either leads to something of the Catholic position of infallibility (but instead of Magisterium, you have Individuals), or else the Holy Spirit is redundant (since the Holy Spirit cannot guide unto falsehood).
Ken Temple February 9th, 2010 12:30 pm :
Tom and others, thanks for your patience and interaction. I could not spend time on this until now.

Tom’s block quote from # 79:
The doctrine of sola scriptura maintains that the Bible is to be the Christian’s sole infallible authority. The sine qua non (‘that without which’) of the Reformation is that no Church or other human judgment can be placed over Scripture. Power over the canon is power over Scripture itself because it is the power to eradicate a necessary part of the canon or to add a spurious part to Scripture. So the Reformed position is not any more compatible with the Church or other human judgment being placed over the canon than it is compatible with their placement over Scripture itself.
But the very act of answering the Canon Question inherently involves an extra-Biblical fallible human judgment, unless one is preserved from error by the Holy Spirit. This fallible human judgment, by defining the criterion of canon, exercises power over the canon itself.

I don’t think recognizing the canon because of its existence as a collection of “God –breathed” books, is exercising power over it. It is just recognizing reality and truth that is already there. Each book was written separately to different communities, by several different authors. The Romans were persecuting them. Communication was very hard. Churches didn’t have all of them all at once. The Romans burned many manuscripts, especially from 250-312 AD. The historical process of getting them all under one cover is understandable. The codex was just coming into being; many scholars believe that the Christians invented the codex form. Before that they were scrolls and individual sheets of papyri and / or vellum (animal skins).

And as I just noted, power over the canon is power over Scripture.

I disagree with the premise; we don’t have power over the canon. Scripture is canonical because it is “God –breathed” ( 2 Tim. 3:16) “Canon” is a human category collecting all the God-breathed together under one cover or listing. It meant “standard”, “rule”, ‘criterion”.

Therefore, absent the Holy Spirit’s preserving one from error, to answer the Canon Question is to exercise power over Scripture, and to place one’s judgment over Scripture.

I disagree that to answer the Canon Question is to exercise power over Scripture. We just recognize and witness to and affirm and testify and discern and the early church discovered that it is “God-breathed”, because the Holy Spirit inspired the writers of the canonical books. (2 Peter 1:19-21)

So to answer the Canon Question is to violate the doctrine of sola scriptura by placing something over the Christian’s sole infallible authority.

I understand why you think that; but I disagree that we violate the doctrine of Sola Scriptura.

If Protestants see the Catholic Church as placing herself ‘over’ Scripture simply by articulating the canon of Scripture, so too they should see answers to the Canon Question culled from human reason or extra-Biblical evidence as being ‘over’ Scripture. Since Protestants see the former as violating sola scriptura, there is no principled reason not to see the latter as a violation of sola scriptura.

The early got some things right and some things wrong. It was the promise of Jesus to send the Holy Spirit of Truth to teach the apostles all things, and guide the apostles into all the truth ( John 14:24; and 16:12-13) that shows us that the apostles wrote the Scriptures down. We agree with Athanasius in 367 AD on the canon of the NT; (and Origen probably also had the same canon in 250 AD.) We are just looking at the history and tradition and testing it by the word of God. Whatever agrees with Scripture is true, and whatever does not agree is not true.

As Gregory of Nyssa wrote:
“We make the Holy Scriptures the canon and rule of every dogma; we of necessity look upon that, and receive alone that which may be conformable to the intention of those writings.” ( From “On the Soul and Resurrection”)

And Basil –
“Therefore, let God-inspired Scripture decide between us; and on whichever side be found doctrines in harmony with the word of God, in favor of that side will be cast the vote of truth.” (letter 189)
===============================================================
We are going in circles a little bit.

That is the nature of apologetics.

Please tell me with which premise or conclusion from my block quote in #79 you disagree.
see above
In answer to your question about what I am saying, I am saying this:
I argued in the paper that for Protestantism to be consistent, it has to see any extra-Biblical evidence that is needed to define the canon as being above the canon, and thus as violating sola scriptura.

No, it does not have to see that as above the canon, and it does not violate Sola Scriptura. Especially since the 27 did not drop from the sky in one “codex” or “book”. We acknowledge the process of the early history of the church.

We agree that the Reformers rejected the Catholic Church because they saw her as placing herself “over” Scripture. A lot of things happened as a result of this, certainly including the Reformers’ rejection of the Catholic claim to the charism of infallibility. But my point in that block quote in #79, is about the need for consistent rejection of things that are “over” Scripture. Until you address that part of my argument, I think talk of infallibility is a distraction.

Not trying to distract; rather pointing out that the RCC does not only use extra-biblical sources; but claims that they are also infallible, and that claim was not dogma until Trent and Vatican I, and it honestly seems like anachronism and as you mentioned, “drawing a circle” around something before you shoot at it and claim that already hit the target. Only the Scriptures are infallible, because they are God’s word. John 17:8; 17:17.

Ken, please note that I did not accuse you of spewing rhetoric. “Rhetoric” doesn’t have to be a pejorative term, and I didn’t mean it that way. I meant it this way: “the use of language.”

Sorry; I apologize. I didn’t mean it pejorative either. It appeared that I offended you by that statement.

You said about my Gettysburg example and people’s handling of history: “If something really happens in history, then it is truth and reality, (that it happened), right?”
This is key: the proper scope of the canon is not something that happened in history. You gave examples, like that Mark wrote the Gospel of Mark. That is something that happened. But you cannot get from [Mark wrote the Gospel of Mark] to [the Gospel of Mark is canonical] without an intermediate step.

I see now. . . umm . . . I guess I would add, “Mark wrote the Gospel of Mark under Peter’s direction, who was carried along by the Holy Spirit to write it ( 2 Peter 1:20), so because it is God-breathed, it is canonical. Canon is a result of being “God-breathed”. It is self-attesting to those who have the Spirit and are mature – I John 2:27; John 10:27; I Cor. 2:14-16; Galatians 4:6.

This step is not epistemology

Seems like it to me, honestly.

either (that’s another distracting point). The intermediate step is your having to apply (1) human reason and (2) your criterion of canonicity. If we found another letter by Mark, would you say that got wrongfully left out of the Bible?

No, I don’t think it is a distracting point; it is the essence of the RCC apologetic argument to get Protestants to return to Rome. (Both epistemology and infalliblity and assurance for canon and the right interpretaion and unity of history and love of history; along with desire for deeper thought and rejection of shallowness of modern Evangelicalism)

No, I don’t believe anything got left out or added wrongly. (of the 66 books that Protestants believe) That hypothetical of finding a letter by Mark is not really worth worrying about. Why waste time with “what if another letter by Mark was found?” That is similar to the overboard desire for infallible certainty like the “what about Bob?” syndrome that C. Michael Patton talked about.
He wrote for Peter, an apostle; that’s good enough. The internal character and spiritual quality of the book of Mark (that it is “God-breathed”) is more important than the fact that Mark wrote it.

Why is Mark’s authorship a proof of canonicity? If we found out that someone other than Mark wrote that Gospel, would you exclude it?

As long as it is inspired / God-breathed, and under Peter’s direction, doesn’t really matter. We have testimony from Papias, Irenaeus, Eusebius, and probably others like Origen and Tertullian. That’s good enough. Again, this kind of extreme skepticism and need for infallible assurance in my own subjective opinion and “what if” stuff can be too introspective and damaging to faith, and sometimes waste time.

You said about recognizing the leadings of the Holy Spirit to determine the canon: “I don’t think it places my reason or human power over the canon; it is merely the means/agency by which we connect to intellectual truths.” Here, I think, is the inconsistency in rejecting the Catholic Church’s being “over” Scripture while simultaneously placing yourself “over” Scripture. If you are not “over” Scripture by studying the texts and their history, and by listening to the leadings of the Holy Spirit, of what is the Catholic Church guilty in determining the canon?

The Holy Spirit guided the early church on the NT; but it was not the Holy Spirit who lead Trent to define the OT deuteron-canonical books. Trent was reacting to Luther and Calvin and the Reformation. The OT canon took longer to come to the RCC making a dogmatic claim about those that are called “deteuro-canonical” books. But it seems clearer from earlier history, the three-fold Tanakh of the Jews and Jesus (Luke 24:44; 11:51-52); Josephus (Against Apion 1:8); Jerome, Athanasius, Melito of Sardis, Origen, Gregory, Cajatan, etc. and that Maccabees itself admitted the spirit of prophesy had ceased in Israel at the time of the Persians (around when Malachi and Chronicles were written); and the fact that Malachi ends with prophesies about the forerunner to the Messiah and they are some of the main quotes affirming John the Baptist’s ministry; – all this combined shows the Protestant canon is correct. The struggle with Esther (because God’s name is not mentioned) and inclusions of the embedded parts of Daniel in the LXX are understandable. Those that knew Hebrew knew the other books were not canonical.

She can equally claim that she has been a “means/agency by which we connect to intellectual truths.” You have simply replaced the Church’s judgment for your own. Note that I am not opposed to the use of human reason (as I used human reason in deciding to become Catholic, like you said). I am arguing that you can’t have it both ways, rejecting the Catholic Church for using human reason in determining the canon while permitting yourself to use the same. I have a reason to trust the Church over myself or any individual, because she was given certain promises and graces by Christ and the Holy Spirit.

I can have humble confidence that we are right on the canon over Trent, for Trent was reacting to Luther and Calvin and used their fallible human knowledge and fears to dogmatically put down the Reformation. Those promises and graces are for the people of God and local churches who hold to the Scriptures. When the RCC started neglecting Scriptural truths regarding justification and salvation and adding works and penance, indulgences, and water baptism as a justifying act, and Marian practices, and ideas about relics and visiting graves and praying to dead saints; they drifted from the Scriptures. Since they didn’t hold to the Scriptures, they could no longer claim those promises.

Peace in Christ,
Tom

I wish you peace also – Romans 5:1 – “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God . . . ” . . . Romans 5:9 “Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him.”
John 14:27

Romans 4:1-16

Ken T.
Tom Brown February 10th, 2010 12:30 am :
Dear T. Needham,

Thanks for contributing. I’m not sure I completely follow you in your first point about self-authentification. Your second point on self-authentification, that all non-scriptural books need to be held to the same measure, doesn’t strike me as a problem for the Reformed. They can say that every book not in Scripture does fail to authenticate itself as being scriptural.

Peace in Christ,
Tom
Tom Brown February 10th, 2010 1:57 am :
Dear Ken,

Thank you for the response, and do not concern yourself about having to tend to life for a few days.

I’m glad that we got down to the premise of my argument with which you disagree. That helps hone this discussion a lot, as was evident from the first half of your reply. You said in essence that recognizing the canon is not exercising power over it. I argued that this exercise over Scripture occurs where one has the power to eradicate a necessary part or add a spurious part to Scripture. To avoid my scenario, you would have to maintain that no exercise of judgment is occurring. I think that is your claim (I’m not trying to corner you). You said, “It is just recognizing reality and truth that is already there.” So to you, Protestants do not exercise judgment (and thus power) over Scripture because they know it for what it is like you see red and know it’s red without applying judgment. I hope I am fairly characterizing your position.

If there is no exercise of judgment to determine which books belong to the canon, and we just recognize the reality and truth of the Bible for what it is as it sits there on our lap, then your position seems indistinguishable from the “canon falls from Heaven” possibility that I mentioned in my paper. I’ll summarize my response from the article: the Church never used this method to define the canon until the time of the Reformation; and what is self-attesting and what is not self-attesting is too subjective to be reliable. Calvin himself employed a variety of fall-back arguments to support the Protestant canon when faced with this position of uncertainty.

You answered my words (“for Protestantism to be consistent, it has to see any extra-Biblical evidence that is needed to define the canon as being above the canon, and thus as violating sola scriptura”) with this reply: “No, it does not have to see that as above the canon, and it does not violate Sola Scriptura. . . . We acknowledge the process of the early history of the church.”

You have not argued against my position, but merely contradicted it, which makes it hard to respond. (In all seriousness, and no offense intended, I grasped the difference between arguments and contradictions only after watching this silly, sarcastic video, especially from :30 seconds to the one minute mark: here.) Given your other comments, I think your argument against my claim of extra-Biblical evidence is that you are not looking to extra-Biblical evidence at all, but seeing Scripture for what it is. But I am puzzled by your saying that you acknowlege the process of the early history of the Church. In what way do you do that? If Scripture can by known by “just recognizing [the] reality and truth that is already there,” what place is there for historical evidence from the early Church? Could something appear to be Scripture, until writings from the early Church persuade you otherwise? Or vice versa? If so, that would appear to contradict your claim that you know Scripture by “just recognizing [the] reality and truth that is already there.”

Regarding whether we can know the canon from history (like we can know that Gen. Lee was at Gettysburg from history), you said:

“I see now. . . umm . . . I guess I would add, “Mark wrote the Gospel of Mark under Peter’s direction, who was carried along by the Holy Spirit to write it ( 2 Peter 1:20), so because it is God-breathed, it is canonical.” Your addition does not allow us to know the canon from history like we know that something really happened from history. History doesn’t record that Peter was carried along by the Holy Spirit when having his amanuensis write, and history does not even record with certainty that Mark was Peter’s amanuensis. There is evidence of it from history, but if we rely on that, you’re right back to having to respond to Ridderbos’s argument about using a posteriori evidence to determine the canon.

You asked: “That hypothetical of finding a letter by Mark is not really worth worrying about. Why waste time with ‘what if another letter by Mark was found?’” I am not worried about the possibility. I am asking the purely hypothetical question to see whether you are willing to follow your canon criterion–that whatever is apostolically written is Scriptural–whereever it takes you. My questioning is not “extreme skepticism” and not based on a “need for infallible assurance” but rather an effort to pin down exactly what measure you use to determine the canon. I am having a hard time finding precisely your answer to the Canon Question because you seem to shift to a different canon criterion when I raise arguments against any one you mention, or else you employ ad hominems against Catholicism for its acceptance of doctrines with which you disagree.

You said: “The Holy Spirit guided the early church on the NT; but it was not the Holy Spirit who lead Trent to define the OT deuteron-canonical books.” How do you know this? You talked about what you think motivated the Catholic Church, but that doesn’t prove what the Holy Spirit was up to, both because you may be wrong about the Church’s motivations, and because the Holy Spirit could lead the Catholic Church to the right conclusion in spite of ill-founded motives. As I’ve said, there is not one single instance of the Protestant canon being articulated prior to the Reformation, so you would have to believe that the Holy Spirit led the Church into all truth in the 16th century, but not before, and for most Christians (stuck in Catholicism or Orthodoxy), not after.

Peace in Christ,
Tom
Devin Rose February 11th, 2010 10:42 am :
Ken,

You wrote: “We acknowledge the process of the early history of the church. We have testimony from Papias, Irenaeus, Eusebius, and probably others like Origen and Tertullian. That’s good enough.”

Tagging onto what Tom responded, why on earth should we accept the testimony of (some guys) named Papias, Irenaeus, Eusebius, and the others? These are 2nd and 3rd century folks, not Apostles. Who says that they were led by the Spirit; after all, they held to false teachings rejected by Protestants.

You wrote: “When the RCC started neglecting Scriptural truths regarding justification and salvation and adding…water baptism as a justifying act,”

Baptismal regeneration is found everywhere in the writings of the Christians in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th centuries. Yet you are saying we should accept the testimony of these same men to give us confirmation of the canon? Why should we? They got something as simple as symbolic-baptism wrong.
T. Needham February 11th, 2010 6:29 pm :
Dear Tom,

Thank you for your reply. Maybe my first point wasn’t clear … tbh, maybe I’m not so clear on it myself, because as to how the books of scripture “self-authenticate” is somewhat unclear (to me at least). As far as I see it, the books of scripture contain information (inspired, infallible …). But for this information to be authenticated (as inspired, infallible, true etc.) then it must be assessed or measured against a standard (is this not so?). E.g. how can one say that the books of scripture contain infallible Truth (or how can one authenticate this), unless this Truth can be independently known, so that the contents of scripture can be measured against it. But for the Reformed, and those of a similar persuasion, the only source of such information is scripture itself. Any other source is fallible, and therefore no use in authenticating the infallible Truth that is taught in scripture. Therefore, in self-authenticating, only scripture can provide the infallible Truth by which the authenticity of this same Truth can be verified.

If there is something wrong with what I have said, maybe you (or someone) could clear up how “self-authentication” works for the Reformed.

As for your second point, “They can say that every book not in Scripture does fail to authenticate itself as being scriptural” – it is very true that they can “claim” this. But the question is, can they demonstrate that EVERY book not in Scripture has been tested? And I do mean EVERY BOOK (and letter) etc that has been written in the last two millenia. Maybe there is just one, somewhere, that has been missed? Is this demonstrable?

God Bless,
T. Needham.
Ken Temple February 11th, 2010 7:05 pm :
Tom,
Thanks
You wrote:
“. . . or else you employ ad hominems against Catholicism for its acceptance of doctrines with which you disagree. “

I thought ad hominem arguments were against people, not against a system or doctrine or set of dogmas.
Please show me specifically how they are ad hominem.

The Monty Python skit was very funny and I agree with that in principle. I am not offended.

I am learning some new things, (Latin terms, argumentation terms – “tu quoque”, etc.) and I thank you for challenging me to think.

I guess what I hear you saying is that I am employing a mixture of all the arguments that you addressed in your paper – the historical arguments that Protestants use ( I am summarizing from memory – too much to go back over and pressed for time right now – “Fallback arguments” – Calvin; and Harris) ; and the “self-attestation” argument or “the internal witness of the Holy Spirit” (WCF, Ridderboss).

Is that what you are saying? That I cannot logically use both?

_____________________________________
Devin,
Thanks for the question. That is the ultimate question for us Baptists who want to honor church history, right?
When I do Biblical exegesis of the texts of the relevant passages in the Bible, believer’s baptism (disciple’s baptism; that is a person must understand they are a sinner and repent and trust Christ and all that He is in order to be saved; and then that person is baptized.) IMHO, the Baptist view is the most scriptural. But, one can see how later generations misunderstood texts like John 3:5 and Titus 3:5 ; Acts 2:38 and I Peter 3;21 to think it was baptismal regeneration. Baptist exegesis is better, but just a surface reading could lead them to interpret those texts that way. Justin Martyr around 150 seems to be the first. After that, if just took off. It seems clear that infant baptism became a tradition later and then more entrenched with the developed understanding of Augustine and inherited original sin.

I don’t know why many in the Early Church got that wrong (that we have records of), but they do seem to believe in some kind of baptismal regeneration. I believe they got it right on the NT canon eventually; but were wrong on baptismal regeneration. I don’t know why and I cannot explain it. That is a question I have, and would like to study it further.

I have been a missionary for 18 years and have seen people coming from another religion (Islam) to Christ, but they think that water baptism does something to them; they bring baggage from their ritual religion with them; it seems like a part of natural human thinking; that the get a blessing or grace or somehow the water cleanses their souls. (like the ex opere operato doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church) Human religion is like that. In Islam, as in Judaism, ritual washing is very important. ( Mark 7 / Matthew 15) Other religions are ritualistic also. Things like animism, Magic, superstition, saying formulas and rituals, washings, etc. are all part of human religions. All religion is like that. Maybe that is what Paul means when he talks about the “elementary principles of this world” ( Galatians 4:9; Colossians 2:20) The young believers in a missionary context coming to Christ from a religion that is very external oriented and legalistic and ritualistic need discipleship in the word of God; just as the Galatians and Colossians and Corinthians were in need of constant teaching.
T. Needham February 11th, 2010 7:55 pm :
One such example: If Paul (or another apostle) wrote a letter to the Laodiceans –

“And when this letter has been read among you, have it read also in the church of the La-odice’ans; and see that you read also the letter from La-odice’a.” (Colossians 4:16)

- can a Protestant demonstrate that this is/is not inspired scripture using a process of self-authentication? If this cannot be demonstrated, then this ‘letter to the Laodiceans’ cannot be ruled out as inspired scripture. It follows, then, that the extent of the canon cannot be known by a process of self-authentication.
Tom Brown February 12th, 2010 2:25 am :
Dear Ken,

Thank you for the sacrifices you have made as a missionary in non-Christian lands. I did not know that about you. I hope you and Devin find a chance to discuss religious practice, and whether it is inherently bad like you seem to think it is.

You are right about ad hominems against people, so I should have said “employ ad hominems against Catholics for their acceptance of doctrines with which you disagree.” It is, as I think you know, an argument that attacks a premise based on a trait or (unrelated) belief of the person advocating the premise. So I am advocating as a Catholic believer that Protestantism cannot answer the Canon Question. You have made several replies like this one:

When the RCC started neglecting Scriptural truths regarding justification and salvation and adding works and penance, indulgences, and water baptism as a justifying act, and Marian practices, and ideas about relics and visiting graves and praying to dead saints; they drifted from the Scriptures.

I doubt you mean it this way, but this is an attempt to refute my premise (that Protestants can’t answer the Canon Question) by criticizing my (unrelated) beliefs. We all know that you believe Catholics and I drifted from the Scriptures. But it is irrelevant to the arguments I have presented in this paper. Therefore, I think it is a form of ad hominem. I’m not a philosopher either, so I might have this a bit off, but I’m certain that noting that Catholics visit graves is not going to get us further to resolving our differences over the Canon Question.

Thank you for giving me a chance to clarify what I am saying about the mixture of the arguments. I am not saying that you cannot use more than one criterion to answer the Canon Question. I noted in section I of the article that the theories I cover are not mutually exclusive. But I had to take them up one at a time for clarity. I think we need to take them that way in this discussion too. I would like to stay on one claim, be it self-attestation, or historical proof, until we have gone down to the bones of our disagreement. It’s hard if when things get really contentious one of us gets to tack to another direction. I should note that I referred to Calvin as using “fallback” arguments because I believe they were not his primary tool for determining the canon, and believe he would deny that these fallbacks would affect his canonical conclusions reached by using his primary method–the testimony of the Spirit revealing self-authenticating Scripture.

Peace in Christ,
Tom
Tom Brown February 12th, 2010 2:34 am :
Dear T. Needham,

Consider the hypothetical that the Gospel of Mark says in Mark 1:’46′: “this book is canonical. That would be a strong step toward self-authentication. The Reformed know, of course, that no book in the Bible says something like that of itself. But they emphasize the virtuous qualities of the Biblical books, their perfection, how they all work together, etc. In their view, these qualities implicitly say for a text what my example about Mark 1:46 would have said explicitly.

But you say “aha, that’s no authentication, that’s just a claim that an external source needs to verify!” Here, and I go into this in section II.A., but here, the classical and confessional Reformed add that the Holy Spirit bears inward testimony to those of faith that allows them to perceive Scripture with the above qualities as being Scripture.

If we are on the same page to this point, I’ll just note that this is where I step in with my argument, that this method of reliance on the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit is unreliable to verify the canonical from the non-canonical. It also (in theory) requires a special revelation to each believer.

Peace in Christ,
Tom
Devin Rose February 12th, 2010 8:42 am :
Ken,

I appreciate the humility and honesty your exhibited in your response to my comment. I don’t want to pull the thread off the topic of the canon, so I may respond to your comment more fully on my blog at some point in the near future. If I do, I will post back here with a link to the post so that we can discuss it more over there if you desire.

In Christ,
Devin
T. Needham February 12th, 2010 12:23 pm :
Dear Tom,

I understand better now. Thanks. Regarding “self-authentication”, I think I was expecting something a little more rigorous. I suppose they claim that this process (inward testimony) also “verifies” that the canon is complete without being able to formally rule out all other works, such as the above mentioned “letter to the Laodecians.”

Thanks for clearing up the confusion,

God Bless,

T. Needham
Ken Temple February 12th, 2010 12:59 pm :
Tom,
Thanks for clarifying on ad homimen. I would humbly maintain that those issues that I(and other Protestants) bring up about RCC theology and practice are still issues of truth, the gospel, sound doctrine and right practice, and not arguments against people. Your point about the canon is the linchpin of RC apologetics that seeks to get Protestants to come to unity with the RCC and the Pope. I cannot go there down that path; ie, I cannot agree that just because the early church got the NT canon right, that they got everything else right about indulgences, penance, ex opere operato, sacerdotal powers, icons, statues, prayers to Mary, dogmas of Mary (PV, IC, BA), treasury of merit, purgatory, baptismal regeneration, Trent on justification, Apocyrpha (Deutero-canonicals), Pope, Newman’s development of doctrine, etc. – I cannot agree because of all those issues that I bring up are unbiblical and wrong. Obviously, to us; and we sincerely believe we are right. It is a matter of truth vs. unity. We don’t want unity at the expense of truth. We sincerely see the desire for this unity with the Pope as compromising on truth. Unity is important (John 17; Ephesians 4) but Biblical unity is always “unity around the truth”.
Tom Brown February 12th, 2010 9:55 pm :
Ken,

My article presents my argument about the Canon Question, and this comment box is a place to refute or support my argument. When your responses to my arguments include your belief that Catholic theology is wrong on issues like Marian devotion or Baptismal regeneration, I conclude that you are attempting (at least in part) to refute my argument by noting other perceived errors in Catholic theology. If you are meeting my argument by listing perceived errors, whether you mean it or not, you are arguing against me (a person). And that is an ad hominem. Mind you, an ad hominem is no crime, but because debates in comboxes are naturally long and problematic, I think we should avoid them.

My argument is not an apologetics “linchpin . . . that seeks to get Protestants to come to unity with the RCC.” As an argument, it can seek nothing. It’s just an argument, and it can either be refuted or not. While we’re at it, replying to the argument by saying that the argument is being made to convert Protestants is an ad hominem. It’s not relevant to the argument why I’m making the argument.

You said: “I cannot go there down that path; ie, I cannot agree that just because the early church got the NT canon right, that they got everything else right about indulgences, penance, ex opere operato, sacerdotal powers, icons, statues, prayers to Mary, dogmas of Mary (PV, IC, BA), treasury of merit, purgatory, baptismal regeneration, Trent on justification, Apocyrpha (Deutero-canonicals), Pope, Newman’s development of doctrine, etc.” I note that this is the fourth comment to mention Mary, but my argument has nothing to do with Mary or these other Catholic teachings you find troubling. I think you’re saying that because you find a slew of wrong teachings within Catholicism, you can’t go down the path of considering my argument on the Canon Question. But I am not asking you to accept all those Catholic teachings because the early Church got the canon right. I am saying that the Protestant doctrine cannot answer the Canon Question within its own framework. It is irrelevant to the question of whether sola scriptura can answer the Canon Question that you believe Catholic teachings are unbiblical.

Peace in Christ,
Tom
K. Doran February 12th, 2010 11:35 pm :
Ken,

You need to get clear about the fact that some Protestants believe that the Catholic Church places itself “above” scripture by binding its members to believe in the particular Catholic canon.

Do you agree with these Protestants? If so, then what is the Catholic Church doing that the Protestant bodies are not? Why does our team of Bishops denigrate scripture’s authority by marking the boundaries of the canon, while your team of protestant historians and academics elevates scripture’s authority by marking the boundaries of the canon? I would like an answer to the question that doesn’t mention Mary or indulgences. Are you an apologist, or are you here to understand? If the latter, then please give a forthright answer to the main question, as it has been repeatedly stated to you.

Sincerely,

K. Doran
St. Joseph’s Vanguard And Our Lady’s Train » Blog Archive » The Protestant Dilemma on the Canon of Scripture February 13th, 2010 2:52 pm :
[...] follow like Purify Your Bride. He seems to be the last person trying to refute the argument. We had this interesting exchange which I wanted to highlight over here so that it did not pull the thread off-topic over [...]
Nick February 13th, 2010 11:13 pm :
While I am way late to this discussion, I would suggest a slight correction:

The original article states: “Athanasius includes Baruch and the deuterocanonical additions to Daniel.”

This should be corrected to also include another book, the Letter of Jeremiah, as his “39th Festal Letter” clearly states: “Then Isaiah, one book, then Jeremiah with Baruch, Lamentations, and the epistle, one book;”
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2806039.htm
Ken Temple February 16th, 2010 11:09 pm :
Dear K. Doran,
Thanks for the spirited challenge!
You wrote:
You need to get clear about the fact that some Protestants believe that the Catholic Church places itself “above” scripture by binding its members to believe in the particular Catholic canon.
I realize that officially, the Roman Catholic Church denies that it puts itself “over” the Bible. “Yet this Magisterium is not superior to the Word of God, but is its servant. “ CCC, 86.
However, it does seem to put itself over Scripture in a practical way, for it claims that it birthed the NT, caused the NT, decided which books were canon, etc. and that it has final and sole authority to interpret the Scriptures.
“The task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God, whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition, has been entrusted to the living teaching office of the Church alone. Its authority in this matter is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ.”47 This means that the task of interpretation has been entrusted to the bishops in communion with the successor of Peter, the Bishop of Rome.” CCC # 85 (My emphasis) 85 seems to contradict 86.
Also many Roman Catholics and apologists do seem to say this. Peter Kreeft in his apologetics wrote: “Sola Scriptura violates the principle of causality, that an effect cannot be greater than its cause”, “for the successors of the apostles, the bishops of the Church, decided on the canon, the list of books to be declared scriptural and infallible . . . If the Scripture is infallible, then its cause, the Church, must also be infallible.” (Peter Kreeft, Fundamentals of the Faith, p. 274-275; cited in Geisler and McKenzie, Roman Catholics and Evangelicals: Agreements and Differences; p. 183.
Rod Bennett, in his book, Four Witnesses, several times implies and suggests this when saying that the Bible did not exist in the early decades of Christian history; and to me, gives the impression, just like Dan Brown does in his Da Vinci Code and other books, that the canon suddenly appears in 325 or 367 (Athanasius) or by 400 AD. They fail to mention that most of the NT books are mentioned separately early on in the earliest records, beginning around 100 AD. “The Bible was still being born”, and “the Bible was not even finished in their time” (especially pp. 259-260) While technically accurate, leaving out the fact that they were written early on ( 45-68 AD) separately, gives people the wrong impression. They were individual scrolls written to different places separately, different contexts. It took a while to get them all under one codex or “book cover”. But they were already inspired when they were written and so they were already “canon”.
Pontificator, (Al Kimel), on his blog claimed that it didn’t matter if Ephesians and 2 Peter were not written by Paul or Peter and written around 125 or 150, etc. because the Roman Catholic makes them Scripture, so it didn’t matter to him. I wish he still had that article up; apparently he took it down.
“The anonymous author of Hebrews probably was not an Apostle. John of the Apocalypse probably was not John, son of Zebedee. And then we have to acknowledge the critical problem of pseudonymity. The Apostle Matthew may not have written the gospel attributed to him. The Apostle Paul may not have written Ephesians and the Pastorals. The Apostle Peter may not have written his two letters; etc. The question of authorship of many books of the New Testament is a hotly contested matter in scholarly circles. Surely Atwood knows all of this, but without mention.”

“If the historical evidence leads us to conclude that God employed the convention of pseudonymity in his sacred writings, who are we to complain? who are we to judge? I stand by the Word of God as confessed by his one holy catholic and apostolic Church.”
Do you agree with these Protestants? Yes; it seems the Magisterium’s authority is a claim to be over the Scriptures in a practical way.
If so, then what is the Catholic Church doing that the Protestant bodies are not?
We say that the canon existed when each book was written (about 45 AD – 68 AD) [I believe all the NT books, except Jude (80 AD) were written before 70 AD, even John, Revelation, and his 3 epistles], even though they were not collected under one codex or book cover. When they were written they were inspired, God-breathed, therefore they were “canon” because they were inspired. They already existed long before Irenaeus and Tertullian and Athanasius quoted from them.
Why does our team of Bishops denigrate scripture’s authority by marking the boundaries of the canon, while your team of protestant historians and academics elevates scripture’s authority by marking the boundaries of the canon?
Because the RCC claims to have decided what was canon and not; and the Protestants say we merely discovered what was already canon.
We believe that Jesus Himself marked the boundaries of the canon – the OT – Luke 11:51-52 – “from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah the priest” (from Genesis to Chronicles) Luke 24:44 – Law of Moses, Prophets, and the Psalms (Poetic books, writings) – Scripture itself ends in Malachi with prophesies about John the Baptist and it picks up again in the NT with John Baptist, quoting from Malachi. (Malachi 3:1; 4:5-6 quoted in Luke 1:17; Mark 1:2; Matthew 11:10, 14; Luke 1:76; 7:27)
Josephus confirms the Protestant OT canon in Against Apion 1:8. Romans 3:2 points to the advantage of the Jews and that they were entrusted with the oracles of God.
Jerome confirms most of it. He clearly rejected Maccabees, Tobit, Judith, Ecclesiasticus and Wisdom as canonical. He acknowledged the sections of Daniel that were not found in Hebrew.
I just found something new:
“But among other things we should recognize that Porphyry makes this objection to us concerning the Book of Daniel, that it is clearly a forgery not to be considered as belonging to the Hebrew Scriptures but an invention composed in Greek. This he deduces from the fact that in the story of Susanna, . . . But both Eusebius and Apollinarius have answered him after the same tenor, that the stories of Susanna and of Bel and the Dragon are not contained in the Hebrew, but rather they constitute a part of the prophecy of Habakkuk, the son of Jesus of the tribe of Levi. Just as we find in the title of that same story of Bel, according to the Septuagint, “There was a certain priest named Daniel, the son of Abda, an intimate of the King of Babylon.” And yet Holy Scripture testifies that Daniel and the three Hebrew children were of the tribe (p. 493) of Judah. For this same reason when I was translating Daniel many years ago, I noted these visions with a critical symbol, showing that they were not included in the Hebrew. And in this connection I am surprised to be told that certain fault-finders complain that I have on my own initiative truncated the book. After all, both Origen, Eusebius and Apollinarius, and other outstanding churchmen and teachers of Greece acknowledge that, as I have said, these visions are not found amongst the Hebrews, and that therefore they are not obliged to answer to Porphyry for these portions which exhibit no authority as Holy Scripture.” (my emphasis, Jerome’s Preface to Daniel, translated by Gleason Archer. I left out some stuff because of space, discussion of Greek words, See
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/pearse/morefathers/files/jerome_daniel_02_text.htm)
Also cited in Geisler and McKenzie: Roman Catholics and Evangelicals: Agreements and Differences; Baker, 1995; p. 170.

So it seems Jerome even rejected those sections of Daniel embedded in the Greek LXX of Daniel.
John 17:8 gives the principle for the NT, the words of the Father were committed to Jesus and Jesus commits them to the apostles and He sends the Holy Spirit to lead them and guide them into all the truth. ( 14:16-17; 14:25-26; 15:26-27; 16:12-13; 16:14-15)
I would like an answer to the question that doesn’t mention Mary or indulgences.
The RCC seems to put itself over the Scripture, even though it officially claims it does not. The Protestants maintain that the church must obey and submit to Scripture, and is under Scripture.
Are you an apologist, or are you here to understand? Both. I Peter 3:15 commands me to be an apologist as does Jude 3 and Philippians 1:6. I would be lying if I said I was not. All Christians are supposed to be involved in apologetics to some degree. I have to be in defending the faith against Islam. But I also learn a lot from interaction with serious and intelligent and sincere Roman Catholics like yourselves and I do sincerely seek to understand.
If the latter, then please give a forthright answer to the main question, as it has been repeatedly stated to you.
I hope these answers are forthright enough for you.
Tom Brown February 16th, 2010 11:37 pm :
K. Doran and Ken,

I think the last comment from K. Doran challenging Ken started steering away from the argument in this article. Specifically, if the discussion comes to be about whether the Catholic Church is right or wrong in her view of the role of the episcopate in the formulation of canon, then the discussion is off topic. This article is about whether the Protestant system and sola scriptura are consistent with the Protestant measuring of the canon and Protestant formulation of criteria by which to measure the canon. Please do what you can to steer your comments back on the course of this argument. Thanks!

Peace in Christ,
Tom
K. Doran February 17th, 2010 12:35 am :
Tom,

Ken seems to hold simultaneously that the Catholic method of formulating the Canon violates sola scriptura and that the Protestant method of formulating the canon does not violate sola scriptura. He has defended the latter in ways that have little to do with your actual argument. Thus, I thought to emphasize this by asking him to explain how the Catholic could possibly be violating sola scriptura (in the formulation of the canon). Anything he claims that Catholics do with our episcopal magisterium to violate sola scriptura in canon formulation is just something that Protestants do with their academic magisterium, and thus they violate sola scriptura as well. I don’t know why this isn’t clear. You can’t claim that A implies B when Catholics Bishops do it but A does not imply B when Protestant scholars do it. For whatever reason, Ken still thinks we are talking about: (a) whether the Catholic bishops got the canon right, or (b) whether the words some Catholic apologists have used suggest that we place ourselves over scripture. We are talking about neither of these things. Ken: we are talking about whether the protestant formulation of the canon by your academic magisterium violates sola scriptura. It is obvious to me that it does. If it is not obvious to you that it does, maybe you can ask yourself why you believe that a bunch of Catholic bishops sitting down and formulating the canon violates sola scriptura. Any reason you give for the latter is bound to be a reason to believe that Protestants have violated sola scriptura in formulating the canon as well. Tom: I’m not trying to steer Ken towards (a) or (b) above, but away from those. If I am being ineffective, just let me know and I will say no more.

Sincerely,

K. Doran
Ken Temple February 17th, 2010 9:52 am :
Dear K. Doran,
Thanks for the continued interaction.

You wrote:
Ken: we are talking about whether the protestant formulation of the canon by your academic magisterium violates sola scriptura.

No; we don’t have an academic magisterium. That is your wording.

The books are “canon” (criterion, standard, rule, measuring rod) because they are already “God-breathed” and already existed, already written, revealed by 70 AD or 96 AD. They did not have to be collected together under one book cover in order to make them “canon”, but they were through the historical process of sifting and discerning, and discovering. The Romans were persecuting them and burning the Scriptures. It is understandable why some are not mentioned as often as others in the earliest decades after the apostles.

So, we Protestants share in the history of the early church; we are “catholic” with a little c, in that sense. But, we do have the advantage of history and; we believe that the NT books are clear and self-authenitcating. (as I wrote a lot about that above, from I John 2:27; John 10:27; and I Corinthians 2:14-16) The OT books are also self – authenticating, using all the information above. (Jesus, Malachi ’s prophesies being quoted in the NT about John the baptist, the Jews, Josephus, Jerome, etc.)

We don’t violate Sola Scriptura, because Sola Scriptura never said that we cannot use historical background investigation and knowledge to understand when and by whom a book was written. SS never said that it was the only source of knowledge.

The RCC violated SS by elevating itself over Scripture as the sole final authority and infallible interpreter and determiner of what is right and wrong (Mary, indulgences, etc.) and adding the deutero-canonicals at Trent. (and Augustine mistakenly thought they were inspired and canonical – he didn’t know Hebrew and didn’t like Greek either) Others quote from them sometimes; but 200 years from now, reading scholar papers that quote both from the Scriptures and other works and what other scholars say does not mean the author treats them all equally or as inspired ( ie, the scholarly quotes or using other books)

The early church was not Roman Catholic; the canon consensus by folks like Jerome and Athanasius did not violate SS, but they actually were following the principles of SS to arrive at their conclusions.
Tim A. Troutman February 18th, 2010 6:35 pm :
Ken,

You’ve basically just asserted the opposite of what the article argues; you haven’t refuted any of the arguments. e.g. Your argument regarding Augustine’s lack of Hebrew ability as a cause for his believing the DC books were inspired – if you had read the article carefully, you would know that Origen already refuted that error (that only books where we possess the original in Hebrew were canonical) against Africanus. Furthermore, this is the fourth time you’ve mentioned Mary on a post that doesn’t have anything to do with her.
K. Doran February 18th, 2010 8:21 pm :
Ken,

I don’t think you’re interested in having a conversation, in learning anything, or in evaluating critically your own position. You are gaining nothing from my interaction, so I will sign off. I wish you the best.

Sincerely,

K. Doran
lojahw February 19th, 2010 1:07 am :
Was Jesus’ audience confused about which books he meant he when he told them to “search the Scriptures”? Not at all. There is no indication anywhere in the New Testament that anyone ever questioned which books made up the Hebrew canon. Was there a secret dispute among the Jews of Jesus’ day about which books constituted the Scriptures? There is not even a hint of such an important controversy in the New Testament.

In Luke 24:44 Jesus said, “These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” What is interesting about Jesus’ three-fold division of the Old Testament (OT) is that it totally agrees with the extra-biblical first century testimony of Josephus; and that, in turn, agrees with the official count of OT books the early church fathers unanimously accepted over the next few centuries. According to this reckoning, there were 22 books in the Hebrew canon: one for each letter of their alphabet, wherein the minor prophets were grouped as “the twelve” and twelve other books were combined in pairs. Suggestions that the Hebrew canon was uncertain in Jesus’ day are without Scriptural or historical basis.

It is true that the names of the canonical OT books listed by different church fathers vary slightly, but that’s because in trying to list 22 books they sometimes forgot which books were paired, occasionally leaving out Esther and listing another book in its place. How many people do you know who would not forget the name of at least one OT book when trying to list them? Moreover, how many would always remember the specific books paired by the Jews? Occasionally, a church father separated a couple of the pairs and listed 24 books in the Hebrew canon – but no one before Augustine ever counted more books than that.

So why late in the fourth century did Augustine suddenly count the deuteros as Scripture? By what criteria did he justify these additions? He decided that canonicity should be based on how many churches in his day accepted a particular book (On Christian Doctrine 2.8). Depending on where one lived or with which churches one had contact, the answer varied. Perhaps that explains why there have been so many different canons since Augustine’s day. Until the Council of Trent the Vulgate was produced with varying numbers of books (Cardinal Cajetan is just one example of a late Catholic bishop who defended the early church fathers’ canon). Even today, different Eastern

The Canon Question

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