Transcript

Recently, Protestant Bible scholar Wes Huff published a video addressing what he calls the Protestant Bible problem, or the problem related to Protestant attempts to justify the canon of Scripture apart from authoritative church teaching.

In today's episode, we're going to go through Huff's video and see the problem is still not solved.

So, let's take a look.

The church is not the origin of Scripture, God is.

When I say that Scripture is the sole infallible rule of faith and practice for the church, what I'm making there is a statement on the origin of Scripture.

The origin of Scripture is divine.

And to a degree, the Roman Catholic position can agree with the origin statement, although clearly disagreeing with that being the sole infallible rule, in and so far as Vatican I states that, These books the church holds to be sacred and canonical, not because she subsequently approved them by her authority, but because being written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author, and were as much committed to the church.

Notice that this quote from Vatican I has an ellipsis, which means Huff has not cited the entire passage.

That isn't always bad, but it can be unhelpful if crucial details are left out.

Here's the full passage, These 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.

The church did not determine the canon of Scripture in the sense that some bishops voted and then transformed uninspired human writings, i.e.

those written by unaided human skill, as Vatican I says, and then turned them into divinely inspired writings.

The 27 books of the New Testament were each divinely inspired texts the moment they were written because they have God as their author.

However, the church didn't discover the canon of Scripture either.

The church didn't unknowingly discover the canon through a providentially guided process, like how Pharaoh's wife providentially found Moses in the Nile River.

Rather than unilaterally determine or fortunately discover the canon of Scripture, the church authoritatively declared the canon of Scripture.

So not determine or discover but declare.

And it did this through its use in the liturgy, then the proclamations at regional councils, and finally through infallible declarations at ecumenical councils.

Through this, the church teaches the faithful what is Scripture and that it is the sin of heresy to deny any of these books are Scripture.

By the time the church was having discussions of canon lists and what books did or didn't possess the mark of inspiration, the books of inspired Scripture had already been written, read, copied, passed around, and disseminated for some time.

Paul is already being recognized as Scripture within the first century by Peter in Second Peter 3:16.

And Paul himself is quoting Luke as scriptural alongside Deuteronomy in First Timothy five.

Some Protestants, including Huff, it seems, try to come up with criteria that allow them to reverse engineer the canon of Scripture based on qualities like apostolic authorship or an apostle's citing of a non-apostolic writer being Scripture.

Gavin Ortlund made a similar argument in our debate on sola Scriptura.

The canon is one that the process starts in the New Testament itself, because we've got Luke's gospel referred to as Scripture by Paul, quoted as Scripture, and we've got Paul's writings quoted as Scripture by Peter in the New Testament.

So I would-

So we've got 13 out of 27.

Well, Paul's writings, yeah, so you've got But that, but it's not just which ones you have, it's that there's a recognition that there is Scripture, that these documents are Scripture.

There was an early recognition of some New Testament documents being Scripture.

But as I noted in the debate and in previous episodes, in the first 150 years of church history there are less than a dozen formal citations of the New Testament as Scripture.

The primary source of authority during this time in church history was the church, specifically the bishops who succeeded the apostles.

So at best, these apostolic citations might give you the Gospel of Luke and the 13 Pauline letters, but they can't prove Hebrews is canonical, for example, since this is an anonymous document, and they can't prove the Gospel of Mark is canonical since Mark was not an apostle and no apostolic writing quotes Mark as Scripture.

The reverse engineering argument also assumes that all of these works attributed to an apostle, like Matthew's gospel or Paul's letters, were actually written by those people.

But modern textual scholarship, which Huff is certainly aware of, has cast some of those authorship claims into doubt.

For example, most New Testament scholars don't think Peter wrote Second Peter or that Paul wrote Second Timothy, which isn't great for Protestants because they rely on these writings to ground the doctrine of sola Scriptura.

In fact, as my colleague Joe Heschmeyer notes in a recent episode, where he also interacts with Huff's arguments, Protestants end up having to reject passages like Mark's account of the post-resurrection appearances, because modern scholarship denies that this was part of Mark's original gospel and claims that someone else wrote it.

Joe's recent debate with Ryan from needgod.net on baptism also highlighted this problem.

You see this when Joe showed that Mark 16:16 proves baptism is necessary for salvation, because in that verse Jesus says, He who believes and is baptized will be saved, but he who does not believe will be condemned.

In response, Ryan just denied that this passage was a part of Scripture.

He brought up Mark 16, which was, I think is our first verse that he actually referred to.

And he said, uh, This is a very clear one because it says, 'Hey, you know, bel- whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.' I'm actually really surprised that he brings this one up, even particularly as his opening argument when the vast majority of textual scholars, including conservative ones, actually think it's unlikely that even Mark 16:9-20 is authentic pa- authentically part of Mark's Gospel.

However, Catholics don't have the problem of having to ground scripture's authority in direct apostolic authorship or citation because the church authoritatively teaches which human documents are scripture regardless of which individual or individuals in the first century actually wrote these documents.

Paul says he used secretaries to write his letters, so we know multiple people would be involved in these works, but we don't ground our authority for the canon of scripture on strict authorship claims that modern scholarship calls them to doubt.

Instead, we ground them in the perennial tradition of the Catholic Church, safeguarded in the church's teaching office of which documents are scripture.

I'd also add that it's inconsistent for Protestants to dismiss modern scholarship that denies the apostolic origin of the 27 books of the New Testament and saying that's just liberal or unbelieving scholarship, but then embrace those same scholars when they deny the apostolic origin of things like the first-century bishop of Rome.

I call this tactic scholars for me but not for thee in my book When Protestants Argue Like Atheists.

The early church did not invent the Bible.

They merely recognized the inspiration the books already possessed and formally identified them as such.

As J.I.

Packer put it, The church no more gave us the New Testament canon than Sir Isaac Newton gave us the force of gravity.

Newton did not create gravity, but recognized it.

Yes, the church did not create scripture and Isaac Newton did not create gravity.

God created both of those things because God created everything.

However, the church also didn't happen upon scripture as if it fell out of a tree and hit St. Peter on the head like the apocryphal story about an apple falling out of a tree and hitting Newton in the head, helping him to discover gravity.

We are confident gravity exists because we can do scientific experiments to prove Newton was correct about that concept.

Moreover, those same experiments also tell us where Newton was wrong about gravity and where Einstein and other scientists have to supplement his conclusions.

We don't just have to take Newton's word for it when it comes to the existence of gravity.

However, there are no experiments we can do to prove the early church was correct when it articulated the 27-book canon of the New Testament.

Instead, we have to rely on the authority of the church declaring this truth.

Now, a Protestant might say that the church can get the canon of scripture right even if it gets a bunch of other doctrines wrong, and the church doesn't have to be infallible to give us scripture.

That's logically possible, but how do you know that's the case?

If I tell you that my doctor incorrectly diagnosed seven of the last diseases that I had, why would you trust his catalog of known diseases?

Likewise, my question to Hough and other Protestant apologists is this: how do you know the fourth-century church got the canon of scripture right when you think it got so many other doctrines about salvation, the priesthood, the Eucharist, and the Blessed Virgin Mary wrong?

Here's how Hough attempts to answer the question.

The early church got the canonization process right not because they're infallible, but because we can trust the Holy Spirit in His act of leading and because God's Word is self-authenticating.

The first reason is just circular reasoning.

We know the early church got the canon right because the Holy Spirit would make sure the church got the canon right.

Okay, well, how do you know then that, according to your perspective, the Holy Spirit botched it or failed to keep the church on correct doctrine?

As a Catholic, I can make the same argument.

We know the Catholic Church preserves apostolic teachings because we can trust the Holy Spirit protected God's church.

If you don't accept that reasoning for the Catholic Church's divine authority, then you can't accept that same reasoning for the 27-book collection of the New Testament's divine authority.

Now, a Protestant might say that scripture is not like the Catholic Church because scripture is self-authenticating.Huff doesn't give much detail on what it means to be self-authenticating, but he may be referring to arguments that have their roots in John Calvin and have been defended today by Michael Kruger, that scripture authenticates itself.

For example, Kruger says, If the created world, general revelation, is able to speak clearly that it is from God, then how much more so would the canon of scripture, special revelation, speak clearly that it is from God?

Gavin Ortlund makes a similar argument that Huff includes in his video.

When Moses is at the burning bush and he hears God, he doesn't need a secondary voice whispering in his ear confirming some kind of infallible reception of this voice.

When the prophets received words from God, when Adam hears God in the garden, you don't need to be infallible to recognize God's voice for what it is.

The problem with these explanations is that the divine quality of the world or of a miracle is just much more obvious than the divine quality of a piece of writing.

We believe God made the world or that a voice coming from a burning bush is from God because there is no natural explanation for these things.

Scripture verses that show we can recognize God through creation, like Romans 1:20 or Psalm 19:1, do not refer to the beauty of creation testifying to God.

They instead refer to God's power being displayed in his mighty craft, or they speak of effects that only an all-powerful God could create.

But the claim that a piece of writing is inspired because it's beautiful or impossible for a particular human being to write, those are the same arguments used to try to prove the Quran or the Book of Mormon are inspired scripture.

Plus, some parts of the New Testament don't sound very inspired, like when Paul forgets who he baptized when he was writing First Corinthians, but they are still scripture.

Finally, Kruger's claim that the canon of scripture speaks more clearly that it is from God than the natural world is patently false.

While the early church unanimously agreed that God created the entire world, even in the face of Gnostic heretics who thought otherwise, the early church did not possess a similar agreement over the canon of scripture.

The church fathers disagreed about what constituted the canon.

Instead, the church had to intervene and settle this disagreement.

Even Roman Catholicism, which holds to holy tradition as infallible, has no formal infallible list of infallible traditions.

There is no reference source a modern Roman Catholic can cite or source from, say, the Vatican or a church council somewhere, that infallibly lists the infallible traditions that all Roman Catholics must adhere to, but neither of us need such a source.

I can say that two plus two is four, not because I'm infallible, but because I have a reasonable confidence to ground the truth of that statement in.

There is not and there never will be an infallible list of all the infallible teachings of the Catholic Church.

That's because Christ created the church with a living teaching office, which he says has the authority to bind and loose.

Throughout church history, the church, guided by the Holy Spirit, has issued infallible teachings to resolve things like new heresies.

There can never be a document that says, Only these teachings are infallible, because what if in a few centuries, the church has to face a novel heresy, and so it needs to make an infallible declaration that's not on that list?

Because of the church's living teaching office and reliance on sacred tradition that is lived out in the church's liturgical life, there was not a pressing need in the early church to define what is and isn't scripture.

That's why you don't have canon lists being promulgated until the fourth century.

But Protestantism doesn't have a magisterium or any teaching office in the church because Protestant denominations disagree on key doctrines.

Their teaching office, if you can call it that, just is scripture, and so they need a way to define what scripture even is, which creates a problem for them because scripture doesn't give us that answer.

Huff and I know that two plus two equals four because of self-evident axioms in mathematics, but there is no similar self-evident axiom or even well-grounded historical claims, like early use among the church fathers or apostolic teaching on scripture's identity, for him to use to determine the canon of scripture.

All he has to use is the witness of the early church that he selectively chooses to follow for his theological foundations.

This is why the Bereans in Acts Chapter 17 Verses 11 are commended as being more noble, because when they received Paul's message, they immediately tested it by the solid and unshakeable standard of scripture.

Scripture, and scripture alone, was their discerning authority.

The early church held a pivotal role in the ultimate coming together of what we now call the Bible, but the church then, today, and for all time stands under the authority of scripture.

Paul tells us that the church is built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, those who communicated the word of God, with the cornerstone being Jesus himself.

Notice that Huff says scripture is the only infallible rule of faith for the church, but he then cites a scripture passage that doesn't say that, or even say anything about scripture.

Prior to his ascension into heaven, Jesus Christ never told anyone to write anything down.

The apostles never said all of their teachings would be confined to the written word.

The New Testament doesn't even give us criteria to determine what human writings are and are not scripture.

Huff quotes Acts 17:11, claiming the Bereans practiced sola scriptura, but that's not what the passage says.

Luke is contrasting the Bereans with the Thessalonians.

If Luke was making a point about sola scriptura, he would have said the Thessalonians were bad because they gullibly agreed with Paul and didn't check scripture, whereas the Bereans did check Paul against scripture, but that's not Luke's comparison.

Luke says that some of the Thessalonians accepted Paul's oral teaching, which Paul commended them for doing because his spoken words, as he says in First Thessalonians, were the word of God.

But other people in Thessalonica rejected Paul's teachings and started a riot.

The Bereans, on the other hand, were more noble, and they gave Paul a chance.

They were the kind of people who loved truth, and this was shown by their willingness to search the scriptures daily.

Paul's message didn't contradict scripture, but it also wasn't explicitly found in scripture, because the Old Testament didn't outright say the Messiah would be crucified and rise three days later from the dead.

The Bereans had to trust Paul's message that went beyond the scriptures in their possession, and so they accepted the word of God Paul preached to them about Jesus, who is God's word made flesh.

Huff also ends his video with a citation from Cyril of Jerusalem, but you can see my reply to Michael Horton, where I show that it's fruitless for Protestants to enlist the church fathers to support sola scriptura.

And I'd also recommend my recent reply to Wes Huff on the Old Testament canon of scripture.

Both of these are listed below in the description if you want to watch them.

And if Wes Huff would like to come into the studio and have a chat with me about the canon or biblical scholarship, I'd be happy to oblige him.

So, thank you so much for watching, and I hope you have a very blessed day.